Meat, Fish and Dairy Products
In these regions, among many local specialities, one will be served scrambled eggs with eel, fried cod livers and fried roe. · Polish lakes and rivers are also full of fish. Pike, pike-perch, tench, bream, roach, perch and trout are a great supplement to the meat cuisine. In the vicinity of many lakes popular among tourists one can find local fish smoke-houses and fish bars. They serve delicious food and offer fresh fish and fish products to go. Smoked whitefish with firm tasty meat, delicate vendaces or greasy eels are perfect snacks. Bream, roach and perch are fried in a pan with a bit of salt and seasoning. They taste best served immediately after frying, with their meat tender and their skin crispy. Fried fish can also be marinated in vinegar with chopped onion. Pike-perch and tench taste best fried or served with creamy and mushroom sauces. Trout, on the other hand, is usually grilled or baked and served with the herb butter. · Milk and various dairy products are another popular element of the Polish everyday menu. The Slavs who inhabited Polish lands used milk, butter and cream in their cuisine — especially in the spring and summer seasons. They also ate soured milk, i.e. milk which was first poured into pots and then given time to go sour. It is a drink that has a distinctive flavour and quickly quenches thirst during hot summer days. Soured milk was also served as a side dish to other dishes and used to make curd cheese. Even though Poland, unlike France or Italy, is not associated with a land of cheese, the latest archaeological research reveals that the oldest ceramic dish with holes — which had most probably been used for the cheese production — comes from 6000 years B.C. and was found in the region of Kujawy. · Cheese is made in many regions of Poland. The Podhale (a region situated in the south of the country, at the foot of the Tatra Mountains) is famous for its bryndza and oscypek. Both products were granted the protected trade name under the Protected Designation of Origin. Bryndza is a soft cheese with a characteristic taste. It is made of sheep’s milk or a mix of sheep and cow’s milk. The first written records of bryndza date back to the beginning of the 16th century and due to its long tradition, the cheese has a lot of uses in the Polish cuisine: it is used as an ingredient in the filling for dumplings, knedle (i.e. potato dumplings), added to pancakes, used as a bread spread and added to casseroles and one-pot baked dishes. Oscypek, on the other hand, is a smoked sheep’s milk cheese, which was traditionally handmade. It has an intense salty taste. It is eaten on its own, in sandwiches or added to various dishes. Grilled pieces of oscypek served warm with sweet and sour cranberry preserve is a delicious snack. One can find out more about the cheeses and their production methods by setting off on the culinary Oscypek Trail. One of the most popular cheeses in Poland is curd cheese,
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