Food /
The most typical ingredient used in Polish cuisine [28]
Never understood this - it seems to me that the food itself is just a variation on the typical Northern European diet - meat, potatoes and vegetables, with a heart-attack inducing amount of salt.
Or a heart-attack inducing amount of vegeta. :)
During the commie times people cooked from the ingredients that were available on the market, and we all know how the shelves in the shops looked like in those times. These days people cook from the ingredients they can afford... I always love it when someone writes here on PF that Poles only love chicken and pork. It's not really a case of love but of the size of your wallet. Few months back I read somewhere that a statistical Pole ate 7kg beef per year in 1989, while these days it's only around 1kg. How many people eat duck these days? Rabbit? Crawfish? Nutria? :)
The contemporary polish cuisine is a pre-WW 2 peasant cuisine, that got bastardized by the lack of resources during the commie period, that got further bastardized during the 90's by the unhealthy novelties like maggi, aforementioned vegeta and the likes of kostka rosołowa. The major influences of the 2000's are Vietnamese pho soup in Warsaw and kebab/gyros in the province. :)
Still, there is lots to be discovered and to fall back on. The things that I always miss when abroad are dark beer from my region (Fortuna Czarne being my favourite), home-made nalewki, cold meats with fruits in jelly and proper sausage (that is one from your local butcher and not that stuff from the super-market), wątrobianka (liver pate?) with a cucumber "mało solny" on it, bread with proper smalec, my mother-in-laws mother-in-laws szarlotka ;), pyzy with duck and mizeria ( not the ready-made stuff available in every corner shop), "miodownik", "pijak" and of course the humble "placek drożdżowy". For over twenty years I have been immune to it's charm, and then suddenly it stroke me! I guess you could call me a "placek drożdżowy" addict!
