How Leclerc, Tesco, and Lidl Almost Ruined My Easter

My plans for Easter were turned on their head when I was informed that I would be helping to host Easter Sunday's breakfast. This was a bit of a shock, but we went about organizing to put on a gig to leave none unimpressed. Various chores needed to be done for a successful execution: from a thorough cleaning to an acquisition and preparing of all the ingredients.

The meal was planned to be in two stages: the main breakfast and the serving of white borscht (bialy barszcz.) The main stage of the breakfast—brunch, really—was going to be injected with a little American flavor with additions such as deviled eggs, asparagus, and semi-eggs benedict. I say semi-eggs benedict because there is a lack of two key ingredients: Canadian bacon and English muffins (the bacon was substituted with Bekon Mistrza Jana, which looks like pretty much the same thing.) I decided upon the deviled eggs because I got a hankering for them, and the eggs benedict because that is what my family used to have for Easter breakfast (the asparagus was served for Easter dinner.) My brother—an apt chef—was masterful at making the hollandaise, but stressed how hard it was to make it correctly. The Polish portion of the breakfast included a chicken salad, a sledz (herring) salad, pisanki (Easter eggs)—including quail eggs, and various cold cuts. The święconka was situated on the table as decoration. While searching for a correct way to make hollandaise sauce, I went to the Wikipedia page for it and was inspired by the picture of asparagus and potatoes with hollandaise; thus, I added potatoes to the menu. It needed a starch anyway.

The second stage was dominated by bialy barszcz, with a cheese cake (sernik) for desert. The cheese cake alone called for fourteen eggs. This, added with the hard-boiled eggs for the barszcz, pisanki, and deviled eggs, plus the eggs for the hollandaise sauce and poached eggs, meant that we would be getting 5000% of our daily recommended intake of protein and cholesterol.

The plate of deviled eggs.

The potatoes, pisanki, poached eggs and bekon mistrza Jana, and the cold cuts spread with quail eggs (the quail eggs were made into pisanki before being peeled, hence the unnatural colors of the whites.)

While shopping for the meal, I spent hours fruitlessly looking for asparagus. Neither the massive stores of Leclerc (whose produce department usually sucks anyway), nor Tesco, nor even the venerable German Lidl had asparagus (why would these massive supermarkets have it? It's only a spring vegetable. Besides, they have plenty of space for apples and utterly tasteless tomatoes, neither of which are in season.) Lidl had jars of pickled white asparagus, and had the gall to be closed when I was frantically running around Easter Saturday afternoon (I been there earlier, on Holy Thursday.)

Tesco, which is supposed to be open twenty-four hours, was closing at 6PM, and there was a mad rush. Most of the produce was gone (see pictures below) and the lines were stacked. I got in one line, then moved to another. In the second line, a woman was checking out her goods and loading them into a pink backpack, but she looked awfully familiar. I could have sworn she was a student of mine from way-back when. As I walked to the subway, I passed her and blurted out, "Do I know you? Were you a student of mine?" She looked at me and a smile broke across her face. She was in fact, a former student of mine, and apparently I live on the same street as her parents. Small world, small city.

I carpeted the area, buying an unbelievable amount of eggs, but not finding a single stalk of asparagus! In a last resort, I went to the one open produce stall at a usual farmer's market, and pointedly asked if the proprietor had asparagus. And indeed he had! For the cost of 20zl per bunch. The asparagus (as I was to find out) was less than the freshest in spite the label that claimed to be the freshest. It was white asparagus, which I had never had, but I was overjoyed. The story ends well, with the hollandaise turning out OK, there being enough eggs to go around, and with me eating over half the asparagus myself (apparently the Poles are not the hugest fans of it.) The potatoes were a little over-boiled, but the poached egg and bekon combination was good enough for me. If the guests didn't like it, they didn't let it show.

The empty shelves of Tesco.

Nothing left of the promotions.

So, while these international megastores failed to provide the essential ingredient to the Easter breakfast, a single, brave soul, who was taking advantage that his competitors were home with their families, was able to sell me some overpriced, less-than-fresh asparagus. (The asparagus really tied the whole meal together.) Easter was saved, but not by whom you would think. It's just another one of those Easter miracles.

Oh, and we ate a crapload of eggs.

Holy Week and Wielkanoc

As we close out Holy Week with the penultimate Easter Sunday (Wielkanoc: Great Night) a tradition-rich weekend lies ahead and, in fact, spills over into Monday. Today is Good Friday, which is actually a day of fasting, but most people just settle on fish.

Tomorrow, on Easter Saturday, families go to church for a blessing of baskets of food-święcone. It's well endeared here, and even the most lapsed of Catholics love it. A wicker basket, lined with a lace cloth, is filled with decorated eggs (pisanki), small loaves of bread, salt, pepper, a miniature lamb figurine, a miniature chicken figurine, and a piece of sausage. Usually, springs of boxwood and pussy willow garnish the whole basket. The whole thing is called święconka. As with anything tradition that incorporates something cute, beautiful, or requiring the minimalist of artistic merit, some people turn it into a competition on who can create the most beautiful basket. Apparently, the competition can rival Abel and Cain's in terms of the heat.

Easter Sunday, is a festival one, where people usually gorge themselves with food and drink. Everyone visits the inlaws for Easter Breakfast and then a lounging about for the rest of the day. The whole country essentially shuts down while everyone goes home.

Easter Monday (something entirely foreign to me) should rather be called Wet T-Shirt Monday, as rogues go about throwing buckets of water on hapless victims. My personal plan is to launch a full-scale bombing campaign off my balcony.

Tuesday? It's business as usual and back to the normal grind.

Happy Pi Day!

Happy Pi Day, everyone! Now go back some fucking pie!

In case you didn't know, the first three digits of Pi are 3.14. Today's date just happens to be March (3) fourteenth (14): 3.14.2010. The real Pi day happened some four-hundred years ago in 1592 (hey, 100 years after Columbus sailed the ocean blue!)

My best is the first sixteen digits: 3.141592653589793. There are others that can do it to tens of thousands of places (where do they find the time?)

Interestingly enough, they really don't have pies here in Poland, and are quite befuddled when I try to explain them.

"See, pies aren't quite like cakes. They're more like torts or tarts. You have a crust and you fill it with stuff and then you can put some more crust on top. For example, a pizza is a pie."

Then I send them off thinking that apple pie or pumpkin pie (staples of American desert cuisine) are hideous concoctions of pizza dough, sauce and said apples/pumpkins. I need to work on my explanations a bit.

Also, Pi is pronounced "pee" here, much to my eternal humor.

Recipe: Szarlotka (Apple Cake)

A traditional layered apple cake that serves quite well as a coffee cake.

OK, but before we get started, I'm going to go off on the lack of vanilla extract here. In my baking, I usually use gallons of the stuff; here, they have aromat waniliowy (basically the scent of vanilla) and vanilla sugar. Vanilla sugar works best because it actually has the vanilla flavor; the other stuff just makes your cake/cookies/pastry smell like vanilla (kind of stupid, right?) I haven't been able to procure some vanilla beans, so I'm stuck using packets of vanilla sugar.

Also, they do a lot of measuring by weight here (in metric too. Double whammy.) So I just converted it to English units.

1 lb of flour plus a little more

5.5 ounces of powdered sugar

5 egg yolks (or just use the whole egg.)

5.5 ounces of oil

5 ounces of butter

1 tsp baking powder (optional)

Dash of almond oil (optional)

3.5 lb of apples

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Combine everything but the apples and mix into a dough. Wrap the dough up and put it in the fridge to chill for at least an hour. Peel and shred the apples (mashing them into apple sauce also works.) Take about 2/3 the dough and spread evenly into a greased cake pan or baking dish. Spread the apples evenly on top of the dough.

Next, there are two ways of adding the remaining 1/3 of the dough. You can just spread it on and shove that sucker in the oven; or, shred the dough with a grated and sprinkle it atop the apples. Regardless of how you apply the top layer of dough, stick it in the oven for 30-45 minutes. After it's done, you can dust it with powdered sugar.

Recipe: Piegusek (Poppy Seed Cake)

This is a cake recipe that I've acquired recently and it is quite delicious. So, go and bake it. It's a little scant on baking instructions (it comes straight out a family's collection of recipes) but I'll try my best to guide it.

1 cup poppy seeds

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup oil

1 cup egg yolks (keep egg whites.)

1 cup sugar

Confectioner's sugar

Preheat oven to 350º F. In a bowl, mix the poppy seeds with the oil; add yolks, flour, and baking soda. Knead dough. Whip the egg whites with the sugar and combine with the rest. Spread evenly in greased cake pan or baking dish, making sure that it has an even depth. Bake 30-45 minutes.

The piegusek can be cut into squares like a coffee cake and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Jezyk/Ozorek

Recently, I attended a birthday/nameday (imieniny) gathering (it was for two different people.) It was maddeningly boring (a real marathon of dullness), but that's beside the point. The real humdinger of this event was the ozorek (beef tongue) that was served. Now, it might not be very special for many people, but in the US, beef tongue is not often served, so I was quite curious to try it.

I should note, that I—as a rule—don't eat offal of any sort (liver is especially repulsive. It's absolutely hideous in terms of texture, taste, and smell. It's the organ that filters out toxins from your body!) I was willing to try tongue on the basis that it's not an organ meat, but rather a muscle.

The ozorki were arranged on a plate with some horseradish sauce. It may be just the way that it was cooked, but they were dull brown and didn't at all look like tongues. They had a beefy taste (no surprise there) and they were very tender (imagine what a cooked tongue would have as a texture and that's what it's like.) I ate only one portion and didn't go for any more, but the experience wasn't unpleasant in any way. The horseradish sauce complimented it quite well.

The bottom line of it all is that, had no one told me that it was tongue, I would have never had known or guessed (and probably helped myself to more.) It's a food that can please even the most squeamish of eaters; just don't tell them it's a cow's tongue.

Recipe: Leniwe Pierogi (Lazy Dumplings)

While traditional stuffed pierogi such as pierogi ruskie and pierogi z miesem dominate Polish pierogi menus, several varieties of solid pierogi (like those more available in Slask and Czech cuisines) are still made by the bearers of tradition. Some Poles are hesitant to even classify them as pierogi (dumplings) at all, and refer to them as noodles.

This recipe comes from the mother of a student of mine, which in turn got in from her mother, and so on.

While a sweet dish, it's served for dinner.

Ingredients:

700-800 grams of cottage cheese (probably around three-four cups) (NOTE: The best cheese for this is twaróg (called quark in English, I believe.) It's like a drier form of cottage cheese.)

3 tablespoons of flour (more if needed)

2 eggs

Pinch of salt

Butter (optional)

Bread crumbs (optional)

Sugar (optional)

In two separate bowls, separate the egg whites and the yolks. Beat the whites until stiff like a meringue. Combine first four ingredients (including both egg whites and yolks) into large mixing bowl and mix thoroughly until a sticky dough has formed. Start boiling some water.

Divide the dough into two equal balls; roll balls between palms and a floured surface to form a mid-sized 'ropes' of dough about two-inches thick. Cut the ropes into pieces, maybe a half-inch thick. Place the pieces into the boiling water and cook them for three (3) minutes. Retrieve the dumplings using a slotted spoon and place on a dish.

Smother with butter; sprinkle with bread crumbs; sprinkle with sugar; serve.

The bread crumbs, sugar, and butter are optional. You may wish to serve them in a white-cheese sauce, or as traditional pierogi (or however you wish.)

There are several variations of this recipe. Some call for potatoes (use 75% of the cheese and add in 200g of cooked, mashed potatoes.) Experiment a little and see what works!

Sie essen das Essen in Essen.

Poland has a city called "Boat" (Lodz) and Germany has a city called "Food" (Essen.)
Since coming here, I've eaten more brined and cured food items than I have in my entire life and I expect to develop an ulcer soon, if not stomach cancer. Largely, it is of my own accord.  Sauerkraut (Kapusta Kiszona), pickles and sour pickles (the sour pickles are fermented much like sauerkraut) (Ogorki Conserwowe and Ogorki Kiszone) as well as cured meats like kindziuk and dried kielbasa.
As in America, there is a difference between what people eat at home and what they eat at a restaurant. While they do have pierogi, barszcz and (ugh) flaki, mostly it is eaten for special occasions.  Barszcz, a classic, is usually served at Christmas, and it's quite different from what most people think.  While it is a beet soup, it's not thick like the Russian kind.  Instead, it is (guess!) semi-fermented.  It's clear, acidic and made by doing some small fermenting with rye bread.  Flaki is supposed to be eaten in the winter and/or when you are very drunk.  It's a hearty soup made from tripe and looks like some dog just threw it up.  I don't know how it smells, but I assure you that I'm not eager to find out.

American food is commonly thought of just hot dogs and hamburgers (both of which are German.  Hamburger (Hamburg) and Frankfurter (Frankfurt)) but there is actually a lot of originality.  Take a Thanksgiving feast:  Turkey, Pumpkin pie (these types (apple, pumpkin, cherry) are not common outside North America) pecan rolls, mashed potatoes (served all around the world.)  This is good food, and you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who will object.  It has a good balance of protein, starch and veggies (usually there are brussels sprouts, salad, maybe asparagus.)  One complaint of German cooking is that it is often only protein and starch (mainly potatoes.)  Also, there are more "Asian" restaurants in the US than McDonalds', Wendys' and Burger Kings combined (upwards of 40,000 (I think.))  General Tsao's Chicken is a purely American creation.  The Chinese don't eat that shit.  Most Japanese would be appalled at our sushi and most Thai would find Pad Thai (in the words of Jon Stewart (or one of his writers)) "Bland and unfamiliar"  (Jon Stewart's America the Book:  Democracy Inaction. (rest of citation to follow.))

So, just as one has misguided thoughts of American food, so one has of Polish food.  Almost.  True, they eat a lot of pierogi and have a lot of restaurants that serve it, they aren't eating it as often as we think.  They each generic meals of potatoes, salads and meat, not prepared in any sort of way.  They eat spaghetti.  They eat pizza and drink cheap beer.  They eat cereal and granola and yogurt for breakfast.

Home made pierogi

Poland, I think, is overlooked for its food and cuisine in general.  They utilize a lot of pork, potatoes and beets (beets is often understated when listing main ingredients for Polish cuisine.)  Just like the French stick liver in everything (oh, that horrid offal), the Polish stick beets in everything (it's mostly just a side-dish.)  French fries are just as common as they are in the US.  Kielbasy (all types) are cornerstones. Dumplings and soups, soups, soups!!!  Chlodnik is a delightful yogurt, beet, cucumber and radish soup served with a sliced hard-boiled egg atop.  Perfect for a hot afternoon, as it is more refreshing than any soft drink.  Barszcz Bialy is served with a dollop of sour cream and eggs.  Zurek is warming, and all the soups are filling.  One soup I had, I don't know the name, was made with ogorki kiszone (sour pickles) and it was fucking awesome.

A mushroom soup in a bread bowl.  The bread was delicious.

I remember once, when I was in Krakow, I went to a nice restaurant.  It was my last night in Krakow and I was alone, so I thought "Why not?"  I think I had duck.  At the end, I ordered a "Swiss Coffee" thinking it would be something like a mocha; all hot and chocolately.  I was wrong.  It was black coffee and rum, and was probably the most bitter beverage I've ever had.  I found a few years later that the place was one of, if not the, nicest places in Krakow.  That explains my bill.