Little-Known Regional Dishes of Polish Easter
Polish Easter’s food customs are known to every Pole – no meat on Good Friday is a remainder of the numerous fasting days from centuries past. There’s also the blessing of baskets – filled with eggs, sausages, horseradish, bread and salt – on Holy Saturday, which underlines the symbolic meaning of these ingredients due to be consumed on Easter Sunday. And the most meaningful of Easter symbols is obviously the egg.
Yet although there are many products and dishes we associate with these celebrations – horseradish, watercress, white sausage, żurek, devilled eggs, mazurek and babka cakes being some of them – there is no clear canon, and there are many curious regional dishes served at this special time of year. None of the delicacies that follow are universally known and some of them sound pretty exotic outside of their region (or even village!) of origin, which only proves the undiscovered variety of Polish regional cuisine.
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Zylc kaszubski, photo: fb.com/zylckaszubski
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Zylc is the Kashubian name for pig trotters, brawn and knuckle in aspic jelly, which is often served as part of Easter Sunday breakfast. Peas and carrots can also be put inside the jelly, as well as some vinegar, which – contrary to the rest of the country – in Kashubia is not poured over the jelly, but ‘trapped’ inside it. And since we’re talking about a seaside region, there’s also a lesser-known local version of zylc which includes finely chopped pieces of herring.
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Krzonówka, photo: Justyna Rojek / East News
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Krzonówka is a traditional horseradish soup that originated in the 19th century in Sułkowice in the Małopolska region. It’s made using some of the most typical ingredients blessed in that basket on Holy Saturday – lots of horseradish, as well as eggs and cured meats, all make it a very filling dish, which in peasant homes was often the only meat-based meal on the table. What distinguishes it from other horseradish soups, is the whey at its base. In Podhale, the mountain region of Małopolska, they use żętyca – sheep’s whey
This curious soup from Handzlówka village in the Podkarpacie region is also made with whey, which ferments for a couple of days with pieces of sourdough bread crust (which quickens the process). It’s then heated and flavoured with horseradish, sausage, smoked bacon and eggs – basically the whole range of the most beloved Easter ingredients.
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Dzionie, photo: Jarosław Kubalski / Agencja Gazeta
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Dzionie is a traditional sausage from Raków in the Świętokrzyskie region that resembles liverwurst or black sausage. It’s made with pork meat, lard, eggs and matzo flour – the latter suggests its Jewish origins, and that it was probably once made with duck or goose meat, but it is now made with very much non-kosher pork. According to ethnographic research conducted in the village, it was first made in the 19th century, and still has some variations, depending on the household: some cooks spice it with cinnamon, others use ginger, others yet add smoked pork jowl to the mix.
Yet another way of using the Easter basket produce is a simple yet unusual concoction named strząska – a dish from Małopolska. The name refers to how you need ‘to shake’ (wstrząsać) all the ingredients together. The base of the dish is made up of chopped hams and sausages, eggs, horseradish and spices, spiced with vinegar. Apparently, the dish was invented a hundred years ago by an anonymous housewife and is only eaten in the village of Siedliszowice.
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Murzin, photo: Andrzej Zygmuntowicz / Reporter / East News
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Murzin is a bread from the region of Cieszyn Silesia, filled with pieces of ham, bacon and sausage. Its slightly politically incorrect name – murzyn is an outdated Polish word for a black person – probably refers to the dark colour of its crust, produced either by the ashes from the wood-burning stove, or by its bran-filled whole-meal flour.
According to ethnographic research, baking murzin goes back to at least the 19th century. Pigs were killed before Christmas, and the meat was wood-smoked and put in the cellar, so that it would last until Easter – the next important holiday. And so, an abundance of sausage, bacon and ham was served on the beautifully decorated table – in Silesia, murzin was a delicious way of combining it with bread.
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Chlebiczek cieszyński, photo: Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
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Cieszyn Silesia is also the place of origin of chlebiczek – a sweet yeast cake filled with apples and dried fruits such as prunes, dried pears, dates, lemons, oranges, nuts, and a dash of rum – which, in a way, is a sweet version of the savoury murzin. The recipe is known thanks to Walburgia Fójcikowa’s 1937 book Nasza Kuchnia (Our Kitchen), a compendium of regional dishes from the Polish-Czech borderland.
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Baba with raisins, photo: Adam Kulesza / East News
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A type of babka cake from Kujawy, dotted with raisins and decorated with powdered sugar. It was sometimes coloured by a bit of saffron, but even without this exotic addition, its yellow hue is prominent thanks to the copious amounts of egg yolks it uses. It can be eaten not just for dessert, but also as ‘bread’ with butter, ham and horseradish for breakfast – a little bit like challah.
As you can see from this array of simple, yet creative and festive dishes, there’s a lot you can do with just a few ingredients if you put your heart to it. Anonymous cooks from small villages are some of the most important creators of our Polish culinary heritage.
Written by Natalia Mętrak-Ruda, Feb 2021