Thursday, May 11, 2006

Like a Polish Queen: Adventures in Eating

Food isn't really the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Poland, but maybe it should be. I like Polish food. Quite a lot. I made an A+ effort to eat as much of it as possible.

Pierogi: Dumplings, stuffed with anything you can think of -- meat, vegetables, cheese, fruit, chocolate. Good stuff. I was partial to mushrooms and cabbage. I tried the pig lung version. To my dismay, it was good, but I refrained from eating another.

Zurek: A sour rye soup with potatoes and sausage.

Paczek: These put jelly donuts to shame. In fact, they would be insulted that I even compared them to jelly donuts. The filling is slightly tart, and there's not so much of it that it pours out of the cake when you take a bite. The Poles love them. There's a day (Marcin tried to explain when, and my best guess is Fat Tuesday) when everyone eats as many of them as they can. I could get behind that.

Pomidorowa: A tomato and, usually, rice soup. Beats Campbells.

Nalesniki: When it comes to crepes, the French have nothing on the Poles.

Grzybowa: Mushroom soup. My favorite of the soups.

Pakora: This isn't Polish, but Indian, I think. Who cares? Fried vegetables -- you can't go wrong.

Samosa: Also Indian. Also delicious.

Awas chlebowy: A drink based on bread...something. (Again, something about the description was lost in translation.) Sort of soft-drink-esque, and surprisingly good.

Podpiwek: Another drink, this one based on beer. Not alcoholic. Again, like a soft drink, and the beer taste is slight. I don't like beer, but I liked this very much.

Barszcz: Beetroot soup. Unless you have a thing for beets and the concept of cold soup, avoid this at all costs.

1 comment:

Freeze_Dried_Brilliance said...

Sounds like a yummy adventure! Just mentioning polish perogies makes me yearn for my moms! She uses my grandma's recipe and they're easily top of my favorite food list.