Restocking the Rivers: Poland’s Forgotten Surfeit of Sturgeon
While the days of Polish rivers swarming with wild hundred-kilo sturgeon are long gone, hatchery-bred sturgeon is gradually finding its way back into Polish cuisine. Over the last dozen or so years, the fish has returned to Warmia and Mazury, to the Brodnicki Lake region, and to Greater Poland. Polish fisheries are even producing luxury caviar, which is exported and enjoyed far and wide, even to the United Arab Emirates!
Giant sturgeon aren’t a rare thing in Warsaw
We should take the history of the sturgeon as a cautionary tale. As late as the mid-19th century, Warsaw papers reported on the enormous sturgeon (jesiotr in Polish) that were available in Warsaw markets. We learn from an 1847 issue of Kurier Warszawski that ‘giant sturgeon aren’t a rare thing in Warsaw’. The largest of them were said to be four metres long!
Jesiotrzyna – as sturgeon meat was known – was cheaper in the marketplace than most other species of fish. Sources tell us that Polish caviar was even shipped to the court of the Russian Tsar in Petersburg. There’s also a folk tradition that, in a certain village at the mouth of the Drwęca River, sturgeon were caught in such quantity that their caviar was fed to the local pigs.
Sturgeon were fished out of the Wisła River every year: ‘Vistula fishermen claim that the sturgeon swims all the way to the mouth of the San and, as soon as it tastes the water of that river, it immediately returns to the sea’. The fish roamed from the Baltic southward up the Wisła, Oder, Bug and Narwia. They sometimes even reached the Dunajec. In 1924, one sturgeon was caught near Niedzica that measured three metres in length and, in the 1930s in the Lower Wisła Valley, one was caught that weighed well over one hundred kilos. The sturgeon population was so depleted by overfishing that a complete ban on fishing was put in place prior to World War II. Despite that attempt at conservation, after 1945 sturgeon didn’t reappear on Polish menus.
Intensive fishing, water pollution and river control programs all served to wipe out the Polish sturgeon population. From time to time, the press would report the catch of single sturgeon, such as the almost three-metre, 140-kilo female sturgeon caught in the Wisła near Toruń. A 210-centimetre sturgeon caught in 1972 can be viewed at the Marine Museum in Gdynia. After that, sturgeon were no longer encountered in Polish waters…
Dried, marinated or smoked
Since the sturgeon disappeared, a centuries-old culinary tradition and the knowledge of preparing sturgeon also faded from memory. Centuries ago, the abundance of sturgeon in the rivers required the development of different methods of storing and preserving the fish. We know from a collection of old Polish recipes entitled Old Polish Culinary Recipes of the 16th to 18th Centuries, published by the Museum of King Jan III in Wilanów, that sturgeon was salted, dried, pickled, marinated in herbs and smoked. Wyzina (dried beluga) was the main source of protein for much of the population.
Conservation was easier in the east due to the harsh and lengthy winters there – fish were frozen whole. When needed, they would be defrosted, their heads would be cut off and they would be sliced into pieces which would be salted, stacked and weighted down with stones – preserved in this way, the fish could be stored in icehouses. The marinades might include rosemary, coriander or juniper seeds, cloves, ginger, pepper and, at times, vinegar or beer. Salted or marinated pieces of fish were sometimes also smoked.
Text
…once cleaned, the fish should be cut into pieces and salted with roasted salt. Let it lie this way for two hours. Meanwhile, boil light vinegar half and half with French wine, cut up carrots, parsley, celery, leeks and onion, add pepper, English herbs, bay leaf, marjoram, basil, a few sage leaves and, when this has cooked a good hour, put in the fish – without washing off the salt. Cook an additional 25-30 minutes, remove it, place it in slices into a glass or glazed ceramic vessel so that the flavour should improve, cool and strain the fish, pouring the boiled vinegar on top. If the fish is to be eaten soon – that is, in the next few days – cook it in vegetable-flavoured water and pour the vinegar over it. When serving, dust with parsley, capers or chopped chives and pepper and add oil and vinegar.
Other than this recipe, the fish was also baked, fried and used for filling in dumplings and pies.
Restocking the rivers
Today, sturgeon is under a special protective regime and requires active efforts to restore it as an endangered species. Restoration of the population by means of fish hatcheries has been underway for over two decades. This work is coordinated by the Inland Fisheries Institute in Olsztyn in cooperation with the Institute of Water Ecology and Inland Fishery in Berlin, and the Sturgeon Fish Producers Organisation in Toruń. Funds for the reintroduction of sturgeon have been made available in the framework of European Union fisheries programmes and the restocking is also financed from the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture. As a result of the restocking in several rivers, sturgeon have begun to reappear in the waters of the Gdańsk Bay, the Szczecin Lagoon and other parts of the Baltic region.
Leading the effort to restock Polish waters are the fish farms in Greater Poland, the Brodnicki Lake region and in the Warmia and Mazury voivodeships. One of the best-known breeders is the ‘Gosławice’ Fish Farm – their engagement with sturgeon began in the early 1990s. In view of the fact that early experiments proved promising, it was decided to expand the breeding efforts in order to produce both the fish itself and the caviar it provides. Today, an exclusive unpasteurised caviar from Gosławice is sold under the Antonius label and it can compete in quality with the best caviars in the world. It is obtained from the female fish of two species: Russian and Siberian sturgeon.
Reconstruction
The memory of sturgeon steaks is being restored through the recovery of historic recipes and attempts to realise those recipes in practice by certain producers, processors and devotees of old fish cuisines. Food historian Professor Jarosław Dumanowski of Copernicus University in Toruń makes the point that ‘with great effort, we are bringing back this fish which was completely wiped out a few decades ago. While it’s true that today’s sturgeon aren’t wild fish, they are still a reminder of past abundance. It is an excellent example of reconstruction in Polish cuisine and it may prove to be a product that interacts very well with its environment – the lakes – and all that flows from that – with the breeding of fish and with the narrative about nature and its diversity in the past’.
The sturgeon family – expensive and exclusive today – is beginning to be appreciated once again and sturgeon is increasingly often to be found on restaurant menus. The fish’s flesh is delicate and flavourful; it contains phosphorus and potassium, vitamin A and folic acid.
Originally written in Polish, translated by Yale Reisner, July 2021
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