Everytime I'm in Krakow and want to cook dishes which I cook on a regularly basis in Belgium, involving "cream" (or "creme" in French), I just can't find it in shops!!! I tried various "smietana" but they are never what I want. What I'm looking for is that very liquid cream we use for sauces, and also for soups sometimes, in such cuisines as Belgian, french and Italian, and probably a good deal of other european countries.
All the "smietana" I buy in Krakow never have the required taste. They're a bit sour or taste a bit like cheese. No! I didn't mistakingly bought kefir or maslanka. It definitely reads "smietana" but it's never what I want. The only solution I found is to buy cream in Belgium and bring it with me everytime I go back to Krakow.
Would it be, by any chance, called another name than smietana?
OR, I already tried that, and even some where it was written "sos". But that's not it. Maybe in Poland you have a different method to prepare cream than ours...
Maybe another example. If you were to put cream in your coffee instead of milk, sothat it becomes "gęsty" but still tastes rather like milk, which product would you use? That's in fact the one I need... ;-)
£ukasz is right. The stuff for coffee is similar to British cream, but not really cream - some sort of substitute instead.
I remember when I first ate a cream cake here, and thought the cream had gone rancid.
Sometimes you can get the right stuff by asking for 'śmietana słodka' - that shouldn't have the sour taste preferred in Eastern Europe.
But French 'creme' is a bit harder to find. I saw it once in Leclerc (the big Leclerc near the junction of al. Jerozolimskie and ul. Popularna) and I think Mini Europa have it.
śmietana kremowa - or słodka śmietana is to be bought in every bigger shop -even though it does not find too much use in the Polish cuisine - appart from being added to coffee (
śmietana/śmietanka kremowa is what you are after and that will be in with all the youghurts and cream in any shop really. that powdred stuff is just coffee matte! if you're looking for creme, or double/single cream supermarkets like Lidl or Leclerc might have it, i've personally not seen them but then i never really looked. śmietanka should do the job.
I think this has already been already explained. According to what has been said, I believe it's "śmietana kremowa" or "śmietana słodka". It can also be "śmietanka" (diminutive of "śmietana"). It seems to me now that using this word diminutively, the Polish language would most often indicate cream which is not sour, while with "śmietana" it tends to denote something which is most likely to be sour; if not, it is accompanied by the adjective "słodka" or "kremowa".
The French "fraiche" is "fresh", so it may indicate that the thing hasn't become sour yet, which needs some time and no conservants in it. In other words, it is still "sweet", just as it will be with the Polish term "słodka śmietana".
you are wrong here - creme fraiche is actually somewhat soured cream high in fat content (28%) there is an entry on it in English wikipedia - creme fraiche is not widely available in Poland but should be available in at least some shops of the delicatessen sort - eventually one can prepare creme fraiche on his/her own using Polish sour cream and the thick sweet cream (śmietanka 30 to 36% fat) in 1 to 2 proportion - you need to heat and mix both of them but not too much (60 degrees) and them leave for at least 10 hours - I found this recipe on a Polish website
creme fraiche is known not to curdle while heated (contrary to Polish sour cream) - that's why it is widely used in French cuisine as an ingredient in sauces and soups (and in many other recipes)
Well, at the beginning, I told my gf that we needed to buy "krem" for the recipe. She laughed and explained the difference of vocabulary. Of course that evening I massaged her body with krem. And with smietana another day. She enjoyed the combination of hands and tongue ;-).
creme fraiche is known not to curdle while heated (contrary to Polish sour cream) - that's why it is widely used in French cuisine as an ingredient in sauces and soups (and in many other recipes)
Exactly! And that's the problem I had while cooking in Poland, besides the difference of taste.
I confirmed that £ukasz recommended the right product. Actually the one I'm using is the "Śmietana kremowa 30%" from Mlekovita. It's thicker than "Śmietana do kawy" so it's more appropriate for some sauces. The more liquid Śmietana do kawy is however OK to mix with soups.
But what they advertise as "for sauce and soup" in Poland is definitely not appropriate for sauces in foreign recipes.
The closest you're probably going to get is get some full fat yoghurt, heat it gently whilst adding a few teaspoons of cornflour (to stop it separating or splitting) when you've finished, let it cool the result will be 'creme fraiche'
Go to Alma Supermarket they have everything from everywhere or go a a French restaurant in Krakow and ask them (the cook) what they use for crème liquide , the Polish equivalent.
Sorry i don't know about any Belgian restaurant yet in Krakow .
Poland has yet to discover commercially available cream.
Whipping is virtually impossible and the taste isn't what you're aiming for - a big problem is the homogenization mania. When the fat globules get that small, you simply can't do a right lot about it - no matter how high the fat content is. Banoffee, for example, has to be prepared the moment before serving.
