The women.

But if indeed you thought it was the lovely ladies that caused me to fall in love with Poland, then one thing's for sure: You're not a Polish grandmother.

That's because every Polish grandmother knows: “Droga do serca mężczyzny wiedzie przez żołądek” – the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Thus, although the cool Tatra mountain water must indeed contain something that makes Polish women especially beautiful, it was not them [they], but Poland's palette-pleasing cuisine that captured my heart.

Stout staples

There are two main ingredients that dominate Polish food: lard and cabbage. The fact that Poles have come up with thousands of different ways of combining the two only testifies to their resourcefulness.

The best example of the amalgamation of those two stout staples is bigos – Poland's national dish. If you're unfamiliar with this savory stew, you're missing out on Poland's worst-looking, but best-tasting delicacy. It's basically a complicated amalgam of pickled cabbage and chopped, fatty meat. The result – though perhaps not pleasing to the eye – is nothing less than lip-smacking.

The fatty foods go on and on. Poles eat kilos of karkówka (chuck steak) and kotlet (any round piece of red meat, from pork chops to meat balls), strings of kielbasa (sausage) not to mention golonka (pork knuckle) and of course, smalec (salt-laden lard, for spreading in hefty portions on bread). Yet the people here remain remarkably thin. Perhaps there's something in the care a Polish grandmother puts into her dishes. While the fatty foods Poles eat are inevitably homemade, Americans get their artery-cloggers from fast-food fat factories.

All wrong in America

Before I came to Poland, I had eaten my share of what I thought was Polish food. Though without a drop of Polish blood, my family was nevertheless influenced by the rich Polish cultural traditions that pervade the American Midwest. My mother often served us up what we called “Polish sausage.” This consisted of a long, crescent-shaped sausage, spiced according to what we assumed was the Polish recipe. While certainly delicious, I now know that there was nothing about it that was distinctively Polish. 

Which brings me to “kielbasa”: only when I came to Poland did I learn that kiełbasa wasn't for summer picnics with mustard and relish, but a general term that included hundreds of varieties of sausage, from the fleshy biała to the beef jerky-like kabanos.

In truth, we get Polish food all wrong in the States. When Americans cook up pierogi, they usually contain only cheese and come out all round and floppy. In Poland, they're firm and packed to the handmade hilt with not only cheese, but bacon, onion, cabbage, mushrooms or any number of fruit fillings.

Another prime example is our “punchki,” or pączki. Again, we've Americanized these jelly-filled donuts, baking them far too big and stuffing them so full that they constitute more jam than bread. Anyone who's had the pleasure of eating the genuine article knows they're much more humble – and tasty. Worst of all, not only have we mangled the spelling, pronunciation, size, ingredients and taste of these fine pastries, we've mixed up the traditional day for feasting on them. In Poland they are consumed in copious portions on the Thursday preceding Ash Wednesday (Tłusty Czwartek, or “Fat Thursday”), but Americans have taken to eating them on the last day before Lent – and eat them on Fat Tuesday (otherwise known as Mardi Gras).

Something fishy

As with every love, that intoxicating period of infatuation fades, and those annoying little quirks to which you were first blind begin to surface. So it was with me and the dark side of Polish cuisine – fish.

Being from the Great Lakes region, I grew up eating white, fluffy, tender fresh-water fish. What a shock then, when I encountered the ubiquity of Poland's slimy, chewy, saltwater fish. Herring in cream, oil and vinegar abounds – not to mention mackerel and sardines. Then there is the traditional Polish Christmas carp. This poor creature is bought live and kept in the bathtub until slaughter (usually by hammer) just before Christmas Eve dinner. The taste is no less savory than the process of preparation.

Fans of fish will most likely rejoice at such an offering, and so much the better for them. But for me, it was almost enough to make me forget that I had fallen in love with Poland.

But then I remembered those beautiful Polish women.

Andrew Kureth