Pickled cabbage is used to make popular salads, an everyday side dish to many Polish meals, including the schabowy cutlet. It is also used in a very hearty and filling soup – kapuśniak.
In Podhale, pickled cabbage juice is used to make a regional variety of the kapuśniak, called kwaśnica. Soured cabbage makes up one of the classic dishes of Polish Christmas – it is simmered with mushrooms, raisins, or beans, or used as a filling in pierogi dumplings.
Beetroot leaven, soured rye
The characteristic Polish taste is also built on the acidic flavour of pickled beetroot. The chopped vegetable is submerged in salty water and seasoned before it ferments and transforms the water into a healthy leaven. This acid is a base for red borscht, one of the Polish national soups. In many households, it is still home-made. The author of a 19th-century cookbook even stated “Borscht should always be in stock at the house, when it ends one should immediately sour up some fresh”. According to some, beetroot tastes even better when one adds a piece of horseradish and vegetables such as celery, parsley or carrot. It goes well with other, less orthodox ingredients such as ginger and rhubarb – proposed by the chef Wojciech Modest Amaro, who also suggests serving red borscht with horseradish olive oil and a croquette made of filo pastry.
Young sprouts of common hogweed (Heracleum Sphondylium) were also once pickled in Baroque Poland, and they were additionally seasoned with soured rye flour. The custom of pickling the plant vanished in the 18th century, but the name remained and it is now used to describe red beetroot-based borscht and borscht made with soured rye.
Żur soup preparations require coarsely ground rye flour (alternatively, wheat or oat flour can also be used). The method of preparing the base of this popular soup is similar to making beetroot leaven. Fermenting liquid is seasoned with cloves of garlic, laurel leaves, pepper grains and allspice. The conviction that “the soured rye borscht which formed the base of the country-folk’s nutrition is very tasty and healthy” has survived to this day. A specific regional variety of żur was known among the Łemko people, who soured their rye flour in milk.
A local and rare speciality is pickled Saffron milk-cap mushrooms (Lactarius deliciosus). They are mostly made in the south of Poland (in the Podhale region in the Tatra mountain range, as well as the Beskidy and Bieszczady mountains). The chef of the Potocki family, Antoni Tesslar (of French origin) provides us with his own recipe from the early 20th century – “blanch the Saffron milk-caps in boiling water, place them on a sieve and rinse with cold water. Place inside a little barrel or a pan, salt while adding a bit of spice, layer with sliced white onion or small whole onion. Cover with a white cloth and a wooden lid and press the lid with stone. When they sour, they must be kept in the cold”. And a local speciality of the region became żur with soured Saffron milk-cap.
Almost any vegetable can be pickled – beans, cauliflowers, zucchini, tomatoes, turnips, peppers – and recipes for other kinds of pickles have been around for a long time, but they are less popular.
And lastly, let us say a few words about the so-called zsiadłe ('sitting') milk, or sour milk – a traditional drink made from fresh, unpasteurised milk left to sour (the souring is a process of the milk’s fermentation which occurs thanks to the natural lactic bacteria found in the milk). Zsiadłe is always associated by Poles with the summertime, accompanying the most simple and delicious of dishes – young potatoes seasoned with fresh dill.
Author: Magdalena Kasprzyk-Chevriaux, translated by Paulina Schlosser, 13/11/2014