Dinner at Babcia’s
Most food cultures have their iconic meals, inventions they are proud of and chefs celebrated for inventing them. We like to celebrate professional excellence, as well as dishes we consider symbolic, original and distinct. Yet there is another category, homey, modest, feminine: the everyday meal, the home-cooked meal, ‘what my grandma used to make’.
The Polish babcia – just as the Italian nonna – is an iconic figure, very often associated with 'the warmth of the hearth' and the fondest childhood memories. Although not everyone has a grandma that cooked – and unfortunately not everyone is blessed with fond childhood memories – when you hear the phrase ‘grandma’s kitchen’, you’re bound to become nostalgic and to think about the warmest, comfiest, most soothing food you’ve ever eaten.
A Steaming Bowl of Soup
'Rosół', photo: Tomasz Adamowicz / Forum One of the most important meals in Polish culinary culture is soup – we love soups, we are proud of them, and for a long time we couldn’t imagine an obiad without them. The whole idea of ‘zupa i drugie’ (soup and a second) is already something that nowadays often makes us think of our family home, as less and less people cook two separate dishes everyday, and the whole structure of our daily menu has changed – more often than not, people now abide to the Western model of having a smaller lunch at work, and then a warm dinner at home, whereas the traditional Polish obiad should be eaten around 2 or 3 PM, followed in the evening by a smaller, cold supper.
And so, grandma’s kitchen smells of soup: she would make rosół (an aromatic meat broth), that she would then turn into pomidorowa, adding tomato paste. One of the most heated culinary debates in Poland is whether tomato soup should be served with rice or noodles – drop dumplings are my personal favourite. The humble zalewajka – żur poured over potatoes – was often served in rural areas, just as barszcz zabielany – beetroot borsht with cream, served with mashed potatoes and lardons. For many, fruit soup is a very nostalgic dish (although it’s more of a nightmare for others!) – apples, cherries, strawberries or plums were cooked and sweetened to make a warm kompot (the old-school fruit drink Poles love), which was then poured into bowls and served with noodles.
The Iconic Obiad
'Kompot', photo: Wojciech Traczyk / AG Then there is the classic Polish main course, which consists of three elements: meat (or fish on Friday – less people abide to this Catholic tradition now, but most babcias would definitely make fish on fasting day), potatoes (sometimes replaced by groats or steamed dumplings) and a vegetable side. Frugal and resourceful homemakers would often serve boiled meat that they used to make a broth (sztuka mięsa) or grind it to make children favourites: meatballs (often served in a mild dill sauce) and mielone cutlets. The iconic schabowy is also a favourite, although chicken would often replace pork, as lighter and healthier for children. Meat would be accompanied by uncontroversial vegetables that children tend to like – carrots grated with apples or boiled with peas; sweet beetroot grated and thickened with a roux, or a sauerkraut salad, which best cuts through the fatty crispness of fried fish.
'Kopytka', photo: iStockphoto / Getty Images Alternatively, grandmas would make dumplings – we like to imagine a babcia as either a housewife or a pensioner who has the time to do what working parents would rarely do at home – and so all of the flour-based, carb-laden, delicious pierogi, kluski and kopytka are another staple of childhood nostalgia.
Dessert Anytime
The idea of having a sweet dish as a main course is a very Polish idea, which might be surprising to visitors, but which truly appeals to kids. And so, among the dishes grandmas make for their beloved grandchildren, there are crêpes and pierogi filled with sweetened cottage cheese, leniwe dumplings, also made with twaróg, and served with either cream or buttered breadcrumbs; racuchy or Polish pancakes with apples, and rice with apples and cream.
Polish twaróg , photo: East News
Yet having dessert as a main course didn’t stop our grandmothers of also making actual desserts. And there are three simple, everyday puddings which best exemplify comfort and nostalgia: kisiel, budyń and kogel-mogel. The first one – a traditional Slavic fruit dish, whose name derives from the word sour (kisly) – consists of sweetened berry juice, thickened with potato starch and eaten warm, sometimes with a dollop of cream. The second is technically a ‘milk kisiel’ – the same boiling-and-thickening process is applied to milk, flavoured with vanilla or chocolate. Although both of these are now sold in quick packets that you just add hot water or milk to, they can’t compare to the homemade warm bowls of gooey goodness. Kogel-mogel on the other hand is a dessert similar to eggnog, usually made in a moment of a sudden sugar-depravation crisis – fresh egg yolks are vigorously whipped with sugar to form a sweet, creamy, slightly cloying mixture.
Flavours we know by heart, dishes we loved as children usually give us comfort incomparable to any exotic delicacies we might fall in love with later on. If the worn-out phrase ‘food is love’ still has any place in our vocabulary, it should be used to describe just that – the memory of our grandma’s kitchen.
