The Eats History Project has had a tasty first month!
Hey there!
As you probably know, I have spent the last month of August in Poland, specifically Krakow, Warsaw, Lublin, and the surrounding regions. I spent this time studying and cooking traditional Polish cuisine, learning the history and figures of the country, and taking shots with babcias (grandmas).
I’ve descended into medieval salt mines, chilled with sheep in the mountains, cooked for King John III Sobieski in his palace, fired a real-life cannon in an old fort, and learned the tasty simplicity of potato pancakes with the grandmothers that make them.
Stay tuned as these videos and their recipes will be dropping throughout September, but in the meantime, let’s give you some recipes to try at home:
Authentic Pierogi Ruskie Recipe
I have spent the last month living in Kraków, Poland, and in that time I have eaten more pierogi than I can count. If this work means something to you, here is how you can make more of it possible.
There are as many pierogi as there are Polish babcias, which is to say there are an infinite number of variations built on the same fundamental structure of dough and filling, and every family’s version is the correct version. This is pierogi ruskie, the potato and cheese version that is perhaps the most universally beloved of all the varieties, topped with caramelized onion and chives.
Last December I was in Naxos, the largest of the Cycladic islands, in the off-season when the tourist crowds have gone, and the island belongs again to the people who actually live there. The kafeneions were full of locals. The bakeries were running on their winter schedules. And at a small café near the port, I ordered something I had seen on menus across Greece but had never properly sat down with.
The texture is unlike any other cake in the world. The flavour is intensely orange, not the distasteful artificial orange-flavoured way of a store-bought cake, but genuinely, deeply, almost aggressively citrus that is simultaneously sweet, bright, and completely addictive. The phyllo dough that replaces conventional flour gives it a specific quality, slightly crisp at the edges, tender in the syrup-soaked middle, pulling apart in a way that no wheat-flour batter can produce.
My travels this next month will take me to rainy yet scenic Scotland, where we will learn the ancient cuisine of the almost-mythical Picts, Viking-era fish smoking, and, of course, the controversial haggis.
Until then, my friends:
Keep cooking, keep traveling, & keep learning.
-Donnie