Forking Around with History

Pan Tadeusz is a heroicomic poem penned by Adam Mickiewicz (pronounced meets- KYEV -eetch ), one of the greatest Polish poets that ever lived, in 1834. Even though it begins with the words "Lithuania, my country" and its only two entirely positive characters are a Jew and a Russian, the poem has somehow attained the cult status as Poland's national epic. Thanks, in part, to its mix of humour with nostalgia for the lost world of the Polish-Lithuanian civilization, which came to its demise during the poet's lifetime, and for the old way of life of the Polish-speaking Lithuanian gentry. Some of this nostalgia shows in the depictions of food and drink; in fact, Pan Tadeusz may be seen as a great literary monument to Old Polish cuisine. Some of the dishes you can find in it – like bigos and zrazy – are still Polish favourites today; some other, like kontuza, arkas or blemas – had already been forgotten by Mickiewicz's times. It's also interesting to see ...

12 September this year was the 335th anniversary of the Relief of Vienna – the time when once again a wave of savages from the east crashed against the Polish breakwater protecting European civilization from its doom. And also the moment which saw (or heard) the famed Polish Winged Hussars' swansong. Or so, at least, I've been taught at school. John III Sobieski (1629–1696), king of Poland Painted by Daniel Schultz (?) Source:  Wikimedia Commons Okay, but this blog is not about geopolitical or military myths; it's about culinary myths. So let's see how the Victory of Vienna helped enrich our menus. Well, if we judge the importance of a historical event by the number of culinary myths associated with, then the Battle of Vienna was certainly a momentous one indeed. And should all these legends be true, then whether you're having borscht with potatoes in Poland or Ukraine, washing down you breakfast croissant with coffee in Vienna or spreading your bagel wit...

The town of Warka (pronounced VAR-kah), about 50 km south of Warsaw, is best known for its brewery and the beer that is made there. The modern brewery, opened in 1975, currently belongs to Grupa Żywiec, which is majority-owned by Heineken International. It brews a run-of-the-mill pale lager branded as Warka Jasne Pełne, as well as its stronger, maltier version called Warka Strong. A 2003 label of Warka Janse Pełne with the portrait of Warka's best known native son, Casimir Pulaski (1745–1779), known as the father of U.S. cavalry. From Wojtek Cempura's collection There were times, however, when the beer brewed in Warka was considered the best in the region of Masovia and even all across Poland. Warka's beer-brewing traditions date back to the Middle Ages; even the town's very name comes from Polish beer terminology and refers to the amount of wort brewed from a single batch of malt. The oldest known mention of the Warka brewery comes from 1478, the year when D...

A statuette of Saint Hyacinth at the Pierogi Festival in Cracow Source:  Krakowska Kongregacja Kupiecka If you know anything about Polish cuisine, then you must have heard of (and, hopefully, sampled) pierogi, the delicious Polish member of the large and diverse family of stuffed dumplings. Possibilities for the filling are limited only by the cook's imagination, but the typical stuffings include seasonal fruits like strawberries or blueberries, and farmer cheese with sugar for the sweet varieties, and for the savory ones: ground meat, sauerkraut with mushrooms, and farmer cheese with potatoes and fried onions. The latter kind (so simple, yet so tasty!) is known in Polish as pierogi ruskie , suggesting an origin not in Russia (as some folks, even in Poland, might think), but in Kievan Rus – a medieval civilization centered in what is now Ukraine. Of course, pierogi are still as popular in Ukraine as they are in Poland, except they go there under the name varenyky . ...