Polish inspiration (especially for people who aren't Polish!)
My recipe column about Żurek, some recommendations for Polish cookbooks, and what to look out for in your local Eastern European shop.
My latest food column for Suffolk News has a recipe for Żurek, the sour rye-based soup from Poland but it is also a tribute to Pod Orlem, the Newmarket restaurant; Europa my local Eastern European store, and some of the excellent Polish cookbooks I have in my collection. Read the column here.
In this newsletter, I wanted to expand on the subject of Polish cookbooks and offer a guide to some of my favourite Polish food items, most of which will be available from your local Polski Sklep. If you are unaccustomed to shopping there, I hope this guide will be useful.
East Anglia’s Polish community is well-established. Polish forces were stationed here during the Second World War; in Ipswich, they manned part of the Polish armoured train unit that helped patrol British railways in the case of a German invasion. Post-war, even closer ties developed between the two countries: political exile, the collapse of communism and the transition to free-market capitalism in Poland generated a wave of migration to the UK. When Poland joined the EU in 2004, more Polish nationals came here to live and work. It is a crying shame that the UK’s departure from the EU threw a spanner in the works.
Despite the Brexit-induced departure of many Eastern Europeans from the UK, it is rare to find a decently-sized British town that doesn’t have at least one Eastern European minimart. Bury St Edmunds is no exception. Europa Stores, my local store, is on Woolhall Street, a minute or two’s walk from my house and very handy when I fancy a pączek(doughnut) filled with twarog cheese or jam for lunch. I never quite know what doughnut flavours they’ll have in (bilberry is my favourite, but I wouldn’t turn any of them down) and alongside the packaged versions, they also sell them freshly made. Generally, these are more generously endowed with jam than their British supermarket counterparts. An old quote from author Margaret Powell about British jam doughnuts comes to mind: “They used to do doughnuts for a halfpenny each. Not the sort of doughnuts that you find now that are a lump of dough. One bite and you haven't found the jam; two bites and you’ve passed it.” She would never say that about Pączki.
Undeniably, rural food-based businesses run by immigrants can find it harder to keep going if their customer base tends towards the small and localised. This is compounded if they are hospitality-based. (The demise of a local Romanian-owned takeout that had Mămăligă, Sarmale and Gulaș on its menu still hurts.) These businesses have never lacked visibility for the immigrant communities they serve, but other locals need to (respectfully) use them too. So, if you’re tired of food halls and farmer-style indoor markets that stock the same pan-global ranges of artisanal food rustically arranged in wicker baskets (I think of them as the store equivalent of Calvin Trillin’s Maison De La Casa House) spend your money in an Eastern European grocery instead. Unlike some food halls I have visited, you could never describe them as all fur coat and no knickers. I like Europa’s staff; I tell them what I’d like to cook, and they escort me around the store, pointing out the best ingredients for the job. I hope to God I am not a nuisance.
Initially, I came to Europa for doughnuts and pickles because I was pretty ignorant about the treasures within, but my allegiance gradually switched from the supermarket, where I shopped for basics in a fairly mindless manner. I am more purposeful now; my first thought is ‘Do Europa have it?” Though utterly tiny, the store’s fruit and vegetable section is much fresher; even in winter, their tomatoes have enough flavour to make eating them worthwhile. You will not find a squeakier cabbage or yellow pepper anywhere. There are endless varieties of mustard, vinegar, mayo, cooking oils, and more pickled, fermented or brined vegetables in jars than you could imagine. The jars look like stained glass. The Profi and GemiGemi brands of vac-packed soup are handy too. (If I ever got coerced into camping in a tent— god forbid — I’d take loads of these to eat.)
Eastern European stores stock interesting pasta and noodle shapes, lots of grains (look for high-quality kasza gryczana- roasted buckwheat groats), and pulses. Europa is where I first met paper pots of wild garlic-flavoured soft cheese (outstanding when used as a dip for paluszki, thin and salty pretzel sticks), dill-flavoured crisps and all the varieties of Lay’s one could ever wish for, tiny bags of less common dried herbs (savoury, dill, lovage, and marjoram plus Vegeta, a kind of all-purpose vegetable-based seasoning) and fresh herbs in season.
Thanks to Europa’s frozen section, my freezer contains bags of frozen pierogi filled with fruit, meat, mushrooms or cheese, and sauerkraut and mushroom-filled ravioli. I know I have only scratched the surface of these cute little dumplings; Poles fill them with so many exciting things. The deli counters are a riot of sausage, sausage, and yet more sausage, thick slabs of smoked bacon that taste of woodsmoke, salt and pig, and little packs of butter (ask or look for ‘masło delikatesowe’- gourmet butter). Also, look for bottled kefir, packages of twaróg and tubs of fresh, thick śmietana and lard. Smalec (little jars of herby, meat and crackling pork lard) are worth keeping to hand; I’ve used its lushness to flavour homemade flour tortillas, fried breakfast eggs and bubble and squeak in it; used it for bread and dripping or fried bread, and added poke to vegetables by roasting them in it. In Poland, smalec is slapped straight onto slices of bread as the Good Lord surely intended.
The cake counter to the right of Europa’s till is a honey trap: there are enormous trays of rogaliki (jam-filled crescents), angel-winged chruściki, and kolaczki made from a cream cheese-enriched dough, plum jam-filled chocolatey wuzetka, and pale gold and cream-striated slabs of honey cake (miodownik). As Easter approaches, you’ll see fruit-topped mazurek start to appear. I’m a massive fan of Wedel delicje cakes (Delicje have 52% jam content!) because they wipe the floor with Jaffa Cakes, even though the latter pre-dates them. (Find them in the packaged cakes and cookies section.) My other sweet loves are the super-delectable ptasie mleczko (a box of the famous marshmallow-souffled chocolate ‘logettes’; this description does not do it justice), cherry liqueur-filled chocolate bars and boxes of prune-stuffed gingerbread cookies. A Polish food wholesaler translates these as “Sweets, pralines, cheery in liqueur, plumps in”, which I adore. ‘Cheery in liqueur’ sounds like how you’d feel after eating an entire box. As an aside, you’ll find some of the best celebratory food displays in Polish confectionery and cake sections; all the sękacz, festively painted eggs, chocolate lambs, angels and St Nicholas’s you could want.
Column References:
Here’s the Polish edition of Michael Korkosz’s ‘Fresh From Poland’. I think it is beautiful.
Nathan Young’s 365DaysofNigella
Marcin, Nathan’s husband, kindly told me about his family’s use of sour rye base. Find him here.
Anna Maria Tuckett, a Polish writer and memoirist is on Twitter. Anna Maria also told me about her family’s use of bottled sour rye base.
In Newmarket, there’s a Polish restaurant named Pod Orłem(Under the Eagle). To book and check out its menus, click here.
I like Klub Polonia in Cambridge. Here’s its website.
Fascinating post, thanks Nic!
I just want to run off to my neighbourhood Polish supermarket Nic after reading this. You always put so much thought and research into your pieces, and from a fascinating perspective. I particularly value the large bunches of herbs at my local one - where else can you find such bountiful bunches of dill? And the vats of yoghurt...