Midnight Snacks & Medieval Feasts: Chef Gałązka on Polish Table Culture

bogdan_galazka_portret.jpg, default, Bogdan Gałązka, photo: Kama Trojak, courtesy of Bogdan Gałązka

What we eat and how we eat contribute to defining us as citizens, as members of a specific social or generational group, as men and women, as people. In the ‘Table culture’ series, Monika Kucia looks at today’s Polish table culture, discussing phenomena, talking and reflecting on what it is today. The Polish table. Today she talks about this topic with Bogdan Gałązka.

Table culture. Our identity, our sense of what it means to ‘be at home’. Our Christmas Eves, our packed lunches, our midnight snacks (podkurki) – my favourite word.

It would be sad to go to bed without some kind of reinforcement, without a light, pre-sleep meal […] sheep’s milk cheese, foreign, spicy, green apples of indescribable goodness, autumn delicacies – some tiny glasses containing something dark cherry in hue… In a word, a short and modest ‘midnight snack’ before the midnight rooster’s crowing.

Stefan Żeromski 'Przedwiośnie'

Hunter’s stew after a hunt, night-time casserole with mushrooms while wandering the clubs in a big city, oat jelly from Podlasie and a modern breaded pork chop (schabowy) made from soy in the diet of Polish vegans, and the Polish superfoods: flax seed, blueberries, kale – an indispensable reinforcement for runners and winter swimmers.

The Polish table – what was it and what is it?

Hospitality & respect

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Dried fruit, dates, photo: Krzysztof Kuczyk / Forum

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I met over Persian tea made of hibiscus, saffron, dried damask rose petals and orange blossoms with Bogdan Gałązka, a chef and doctoral student who ran the Gothic Restaurant at Malbork Castle for 13 years and researched Teutonic cuisine.

Monika Kucia: Why are we drinking an Eastern infusion while talking about Polish cuisine?

Bogdan Gałązka: Our Polish Christmas Eve dinner, the most traditional of the ones that we have, is in fact multicultural. After all, raisins and dates don’t grow here, yet they’re an inseparable element of kutia [a traditional Christmas wheat berry pudding, trans] and the Christmas Eve table. Merchants brought various spices and dried exotic fruits to the territory of our Republic from the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East since the 16th and 17th centuries. That was the taste of luxury. That’s why I’m offering you Iranian tea.

MK: Thank you very much. So what is most characteristic of the culture of our table?

BG: Hospitality and respect. ‘A good housewife could make bread from a stone’, the adage goes. A Polish home will always welcome and feed its guests. Seating at the table has always been extremely important, who occupies the seat of honour. In peasant homes, where patriarchy still prevails, the man sits at the head, and children cannot leave the table without permission – out of respect for the table, for the food and for their parents. I remember this from my childhood. This respect for elders was present. As a young man, returning from the army, I kissed my father’s hands, also at Easter and Christmas, and when my brother and I were going on a longer journey.

MK: And the Polish tendency for exaggeration? What about the principle of going big beyond one’s means? Is this an element of dazzling by splendour? Showing an advantage?

BG: Of course. When the emperor came here for the baptism of Poland, he was supposedly taken aback with surprise at how grand the feast was. I’m particularly fascinated by Teutonic cuisine. And the grand master would invite a dozen or so young knights distinguished on the battlefield to the table of honour in the Malbork or Königsberg castle, and he’d prepare a special table for them, placed on a dais. And these young men, these boys, were served by the greatest officials of the order, headed by the great master, to show their admiration for them. At the end of such a feast, each of them received a medal from the grand master with the inscription ‘Honour conquers all’. It must have impressed them. They were sitting in a hall that was considered the largest in Europe, eating food at the level of today’s three Michelin stars, cooked for them by the best chefs, an orchestra would be playing, and for entertainment animals from a private zoo would be brought in – all this to dazzle them, make them feel important.

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Still from ‘Krzyżacy’, directed by Aleksander Ford, 1960, photo: Wojciech Urbanowicz / Studio Filmowe ‘Kadr’ / Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny / www.fototeka.fn.org.pl

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MK: Food is, after all, a tool for distributing energy within the family and within the system, a distribution of goods. What you eat determines your position in the group. Whether you invite a customer for sushi or to a cheap diner reflects how you treat that person. Table culture is also the rhythm, rigour, framework of how one should eat in order to be a good and/or healthy person. Today, it is determined by dieticians and, of course, various forms of worship (e.g. church or bodybuilding). And in the past?

BG: Point thirteen of the Teutonic rule ordered that the monks could eat meat on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, on the remaining days dairy products and eggs, and on Fridays they fasted. It also ordered them to eat from one bowl. It was a community element but also protection to prevent someone from poisoning someone else. Today we have five meals a day and boxed diets prepared in advance, but we have at our disposal a list of meals of the Radziwiłł family from the 19th century from their palace in Vilnius. The cook there had to really work hard. He cooked for several social groups within one court: for their lordships the elder and their lordships the younger, for his lordship and her ladyship, and he also cooked a separate meal for the children, who ate separately in their room. The social division also included servants: the girls who were closest to the mistress received soup, potatoes with gravy and a piece of meat, but the washerwoman received only soup and potatoes, and the groom received soup and bread. The cook had to know what to serve to whom. The kitchens were like gymnasiums: in the middle there was a large firepit with large cauldrons on it. Court kitchens were catering enterprises. On a lord’s table you could find seven soups, veal and lamb, hot and cold dishes; it was theatre with stage directions. At parties, a musician could jump out of a cake, or live larks could suddenly fly out of a dish.

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Christmas Eve dinner, Warsaw, photo: Sławomir Kamiński / AG

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MK: Matter, including food, is used as a tool for ritual, not just marketing. Food is also symbolic.

BG: There is no food without spirituality. Forefathers’ Eve is about feeding the soul – it’s the reason we leave a bowl of food and a clean linen cloth out on the eve of that holiday so that the deceased can wash their hands and eat the food we have prepared for them. Grandma told me this, and since I slept in the room where the bowl and cloth were, I was terribly afraid. Serving food has an inherent element of sharing; anthropologically it is an element of sacrifice. It’s an offering, a testamentary paschal lamb. In turn, a round plate represents fullness, wholeness, peace. An angular table is associated with aggression (the saying is ‘be careful of the corner’). The grand master of the Teutonic Knights received more food so he could share with the poor. If one of the Teutonic Knights died, his portions of food would be taken outside the castle for 30 days and given to the poor. A sacrifice was symbolically made. This has somehow stayed with us, because when you bake a cake, you give a piece to your neighbour. When my brother brings me apples, I distribute them to the entire building.

MK: How would we define the repertoire of behaviour around the table?

BG: Just as we do culture. It’s a configuration of learned behaviours whose components are shared and transmitted by members of a given society. When it comes to food, Christmas Eve dinner is something that unites all Poles. In Poland, 95% of people, regardless of their faith, whether they believe in the lightning bolt or the cross, sit down at the Christmas Eve table. And it’s great, as long as we don’t put sushi on it. It’s similar with Easter breakfast – it has a unifying function. Eggs and greens are the symbolism connected with life. Table culture is passed down from generation to generation. We are becoming more and more sensitive. The pelican was a symbol of the medieval world and of the Teutonic Order; the figure of a pelican tearing out its own body and feeding its young with its own blood can be found on the well in the castle. This is very telling. Now hosting is becoming popular again, helping and feeding each other. People share bread, sourdough starter, what they have. The Polish table stands for hospitality, and the pandemic has shown this in a completely new way.

Translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar

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