«All
Featured Cuisine
Polish
Cuisine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cuisine
continued...
The Republic
Until the Partitions, Poland was one of the largest countries
in the world, encompassing many regions with their own, distinctive
culinary traditions. Among the most influential in that period
were Lithuanian, Turkish and Hungarian cuisine. With the subsequent
decline of Poland, and the grain production crisis that followed
The Deluge, potatoes began to replace the traditional use of
cereal. Also, because of numerous wars with the Ottoman Empire,
coffee became popular.
Partitions
Under the partitions, the cuisine of Poland became heavily influenced
by cuisines of the surrounding empires. This included Russian
and German cuisines, but also the culinary traditions of most
nations of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In the Russian-occupied
part of the country, tea displaced the then-popular coffee.
Under German influence the tradition of making white sausages
was adopted in Greater Poland. Perhaps the most influential
was the culinary tradition of multi-national empire of Austria-Hungary,
which led to development of a Central European cuisine in Galicia.
The 19th century also saw the creation of the first Polish cook-book,
by Lucyna Cwierczakiewiczowa, who based her work on the 18th
century diaries of the szlachta.
After World War II
After the end of World War II, Poland fell under Communist occupation.
Restaurants were at first nationalized and then mostly closed
down by the authorities. Instead, the communists envisioned
a net of lunch rooms for the workers at various companies, and
milk bars. The very few restaurants that survived the 1940s
and 1950s were state-owned and were mostly unavailable to common
people due to high prices. The lunch rooms promoted mostly inexpensive
meals, including in soups of all kinds and noodles such as pierogi.
A typical second course consisted of some sort of a ground meat
cutlet served with potatoes. The kotlet schabowy is similar
to the Austrian Wiener schnitzel.
With time, the shortage economy led to
chronic shortages of meat, eggs, coffee, tea and other basic
ingredients of daily use. Many products like chocolate, sugar,
meat were rationed, with a specific limit depending on social
class and health requirements. Physical workers and pregnant
women were generally entitled to more food products. Imports
were restricted, so much of food supply was domestic. Thus no
tropical fruits (citrus, banana, pineapple etc.) were available
and fruits and vegetables vere mostly seasonal: occurring only
in the summer. For most of the year the Poles had to live by
with only domestic winter fruit and vegetables: apples, onions,
potatoes, cabbage, root vegetables.
This situation led in turn to gradual replacement
of traditional Polish cuisine with food prepared of anything
that was available at the moment. Among the popular dishes introduced
by the public restaurants was an egg cutlet, a sort of a hamburger
made of minced or instant egg and flour. The traditional recipes
were mostly preserved during the Wigilia feast (Christmas Eve),
for which most families tried to prepare 12 traditional courses.
Modern era
With the end of communism in Poland in 1989, restaurants started
to be opened once again and basic foodstuffs were once again
easily obtainable. This led to a gradual return of traditional
Polish cuisine, both in everyday life and in restaurants. In
addition, restaurants and supermarkets promote the usage of
ingredients typical to other cuisines of the world. Among the
most notable of ingredients that started to be commonly used
in Poland were cucurbit, zucchini and all kinds of fish. During
communist times, these were available mostly in the seaside
regions.
Recent years have seen the advent of a
slow food movement, and a number of TV programmes devoted to
traditional Polish cuisine have gained much popularity.
At the same time, fast food is growing
more and more popular in Poland. Apart from McDonald's and KFC,
Pizza Hut is very popular, as well as many Polish pizza chains.
Pizza in Poland is characterized by the Polish habit of using
ketchup on top of the pizza, rather than sauce. There are many
small-scale, quick-service restaurants which usually serve items
such as zapiekanka (baguette with cheese, sometimes meat and/or
button mushroom and ketchup), kebap, hamburgers, hot dogs and
kielbasa.
Wikipedia® is a registered
trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation.
