Kulturka

Polish Cooking

A reader may think - oh no! another ''Polish Cuisine'' So many similar books have been written, do we need another one? But each of u s has a different version of Polish cuisine. In my view it should not contain dishes prepared from products which in Poland of old were considered ''delicacies''. or were not known at all. So in this book we will not find dishes using rice, red peppers, shrimps, o lives and similar imported products; instead we have many dishes in which the domestic traditional ''kasza'' (grits) or beans are used . Included are a few recipes for game dishes, once very popular, later forgotten, and currently returning with the fashion for hunt ing. Of course, spices are a must, and they were widely used in old-Polish cooking - some chronicles even say, used to excess! This book is supplemented with a chapter devoted to regional cooking, especially that of the former-east borderland region (Kresy), as i t is characteristically Polish. The traditions of old-Polish cooking survived for many years in that region without Western or Sout hern influences. This book is by no means restricted to old-Polish recipes. Many of the recipes were collected by me grandmothers a nd my aunt, whose cooking was difficult to match. I did not want them to be lost to posterity, so I decided to collect them in one book, which I hope, will serve well as a memento of the traditional Polish cuisine - Marzenna Kasprzycka

• author: Marzenna Kasprzycka