Tea Time

Oh dear....so far many people over here make faces at the smell of the dish, but never complained about the taste :)

you need to do the following: cut up, into cubes meat - bacon, belly of pork, other cuts of pork, beef - not the best cuts. Polish sausage if possible (wiejska, krakowska,etc), fry in some fat, add chopped onion (large), , fry gently, put in a big pan. Put sugar in the frying pan - +-- a tablespoonful, caramelise. add to the pan. Put in the contents of a big jar of sauerkraut (German - from Sainsbury's is better than Polish PEK version. Czech stuff is good too!). Add about 1-3 of that amount of shredded cabbage. add herbs (marjoram, caroway, mixed herbs, juniper berry or 3 3 biggisdh bay leaves, several peppercornsa handful of prunes, preferably stoned, a handful of dried porcini (ESSENTIAL!!), some water (1-2 up the contents in the pan) and cook slowly, for a couple of hours. cook again the next day. . It is not a diet conscious dish...in Poland they say cabbage likes fat!. It should be quite tart, but not too sour (you could squeeze the sauerkrat prior to putting in the pan and add the juice later.

The dish should turn sort of rich brownish colour (from mushrooms and prunes).

When the meat is soft it's ready :). It also benefits from being frozen overnight - in Poland you simply put the pan on the balcony :)

another Polish dish, just for Christmas is poppy seeds. My neighbour here always wants it!!! You can get small bags of poppy seeds in Sainsbury's and that will be sufficient. Soak in water (or milk) a pack of poppys seeds. You can boil them for 15 minutes or so, leave them in liquid overnight, drain the water (and NOT use it, hehehe) by tipping it all into a fine sieve....now then - you need a mincer as you have to mince the poor seeds...actually when you take a few out of the sieve and press well between the fingers, the seeds should sort of mash...so a cleaner way of mashing them would a mortar job (which I don't have...)...best term for it should probably be pound the poppy seeds.

Squashed poppy seeds should turn grey white-black (inside the poppy seed is white).

anyhow... take an orange, clean it, cut the peel off. cook it in water for a few minutes, throw away the water, repeat. then cut the peel into trips and strips into cubes. Prepare a bit of simple syrup (water + sugar) - just to cover the peel and cook till the syrup is VERY syrupy, very sticky. set aside. Put some butter in a pan, melt, add poppy seeds, add a medium sized dollop of honey, a sprinkling of cinnamon and a grate of nutmeg, add the orange peel (probably without the syrup, but keep it and add if you like stuff really sweet!), a small handful of raisins and almonds - whole or slivered or sliced or halved. stir it well on very low heat. That's it...it actually (apart from preparing poppyseeds...) takes as long to make it as it has taken me to write it up :)

You eat it - a bit at a time - with thick-whipped cream and thin sweet biscuits. Poppies are the symbol of prosperity - so I make enough to last me the 12 days of Christmas - for the whole year of prosperity.

Krysia K.T. - starannie opakowana