Dandelions!

Polish: mniszek
Slovakian: púpava
Upper Sorbian: mlóč
Czech: pampeliška
Ukrainian: кульбаба
Russian: одуванчик
Croatian: maslačak
Slovenian: regrat
Bulgarian: глухарче

I hope that other food lovers will forgive me that I lied when I said that spring means young beet and radish leaves. I really didn't mean to forget about dandelions, young nettles, violets and woodruff. I just spent a weekend at my grandparents' village and I am so relaxed and happy, with a bag full of ecological fresh dandelion greens. I collected them thinking about Swiss dandelion pie, quiche dent-de-lion. Of course, as a true soups lover, I was experimenting with dandelion soup, too. Pictures below.

pie shell:
200 g flour
1 teaspoon salt
80 g butter (cold!)
50 ml (cold!) water

filling:
50 g dandelion leaves (chopped)
100 g camembert cheese
100 ml 30% cream
200 ml milk
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
few freshly ground nutmeg

1. Prepare the pie shell by kneading rapidly all the ingredients (they have to be cold, as said above). make a ball and leave in the fridge (min.30 minutes!)

2. Prepare the filling: beat eggs with milk and cream, add finally chopped camembert, salt, nutmeg (pepper, paprika) and chopped dandelion leaves.

3. Cover your pyrex dish or baking tray with few butter, roll thinly the dough and place in the dish, pick several times with a fork and pour egg-dandelion filling. Bake about 30 minutes in 180C oven. I guess that meat-eaters could add some cubes of ham or favourite sausage to the filling. This pie can also be made with fresh spinach or (especially) bear's garlic (ramsons).





A dandelion leaves soup was very easy to make. I was actually looking for some traditional regional dandelion soup recipe, but I didn'y find any, so I used my imagination and chopped some handfuls of dandelion leaves, 3 onions, 6 small potatoes, fried raw vegetables, cooked in homemade vegetable broth and thickned with sour cream mixed with fat countryside milk and 1 tablespoon of flour. It tastes nicely sourish and bitter and a bit like spinach and this is how it looks like:



And, one of the most important things to do in spring is to collect dandelion blooms! don't forget to do it right now to prepare dandelion syrup! (recipe available here)

Polish potato-buckwheat-cheese pie

Polish: gryka
Lithuanian: sėjamasis grikis
Romanian: hrișcă
Upper Sorbian: hejduška
Hungarian: hajdina
Croatian: heljda
Slovenian: ajda
Czech: pohanka
Bulgarian: обикновена елда
English: buckwheat

The eastern-Polish city Biłgoraj is famous from its buckwheat-potato-cheese pie, called in Polish piróg (or sometimes pieróg) biłgorajski. This is a great winter or early spring dish, when there still are no fresh vegetables available. You can serve it warm with your favourite salad.

1 kg potatoes
400 gr buckwheat
500 gr fresh curd cheese (twaróg)
2 big onions
3 eggs (separate 1 egg white)
1 teaspoon dried mint
salt, pepper

1. Wash potatoes and cook them unpeeled. Peel them olny when cooked and soft. Mash them with a knife or use potato press. Mix potato puree with washed, but uncooked buckwheat grains. Set aside for minimum 1/2 hour - groats will be softer since they are combined with warm puree.

2. Chop onions and fry until golden brown. Crush twaróg between fingers (you could use any fresh cheese, ricotta or feta or anything, but remember, twaróg is not salty at all so if you add a salty cheese, don't add salt anymore or add only a few) or with a fork. Whisk eggs (without that eggwhite) with salt, pepper and mint, add cheese and onion.

3. Combine all the previously prepared ingredients together. Spread with the eggwhite you set aside. Bake in the oven (180C) 90 minutes. Cut into squares and serve with yoghurt or kefir and your favourite salad

ps. my piróg is quite short cause I made only half portion. It should be twice thicker :)

US-American stuffed butternut

Polish: dynia piżmowa
English: butternut squash
Spanish: zapallo anco
Swedish: bisampumpa
French: courge musquée
Quechua: lakawiti
Tamil: கல்யாணப் பூசணி
Hebrew: דלורית
Dutch: muskaatpompoen

A great recipe for American stuffed butternut squash:

1 medium butternut squash (1 kg)
100 gr blue cheese (I took Bavarian Blue)
1/2 cup crushed walnuts
1 onion, 1 garlic clove
a handful of breadcrumbs
optionally: salt, pepper

1. Cut cleaned squash lengthways in two halves, scoop out the seeds. Put some butter and mashed garlic in each cavity, brush with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake 1 hour in the oven (200 C). The flesh has to be tender.

2. Scoop the flesh, leaving about 1 cm of flesh attached to the skin. Put it into a bowl with the butter-garlic juice. Mash it with blue cheese, chopped onion and nuts. You can add your favourite herbs (thyme, basil, oregano). Spoon back into squash halves and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Bake about 15 minutes more.

German leek pie

Polish: por
Albanian: preshi
Spanish: puerro
Sepedi: diliki
Welsh: cenhinen
Uyghur: کراث
Romanian: praz
Bahasa Indonesia: bawang bakung
Cornish: kenynen
Greek: πράσο

What was first, French quiche of German savoury Kuchen? Don't feel mistaken, Kuchen means usually sweet cake, but sometimes is used to describe savoury pies. In Germany people usually eat Zwiebelkuchen, onion pie, but I personally consider leek pie, Lauchkuchen, much tastier.

125 gr butter (1/2 pack)
250 gr (1 1/2 cup) flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons water
2 cups chopped leeks
1/2 onion
1 scallion
1 cup sour cream
3 eggs
2 handfuls grated cheese
optionally: 1 handful ham / sausage cubes
(+ butter, breadcrums)

1. Prepare the dough: knead butter with flour, salt and water until your dough is elastic. Set in the fridge until you are done with the rest of the preparations.

2. Fry chopped leks in butter or oil, low the heat. Add chopped onion and scallion and simmer until they all are soft.

3. Beat egg yolks with sour cream and (optionally) ham chunks. Whip egg whites until they are stiff and stir lightly in the yolk-sour cream mass. Spread butter into your pyrex dish, sprinkle with few breadcrumbs and cover with the dough (roll it possibly thin). Put vegetable chunks on the dough layer and pour egg-cream over it. As the last step, pour grated cheese over it and bake (30-40 minutes, 180C)

Polish lentil patties

Polish: soczewica
Mapunzugun: jügi
Basque: dilista
Breton: pizenn rous
Persian: عدس
Hebrew: עדשה
Russian: чечевица
French: lentille
Greek: φακή
Upper Sorbian: sok

I love lentils almost as much as I love all kind of patties, fritters or pancakes, especially those savoury ones made from differrent kind of vegetables. If you already tried any of the patties / croquettes that I showed on my blog (grain croquettes from buckwheat , rolled oats or quinoa; sweet croquettes from black locust, apples or carrots; fish croquettes from codfish or herring; pulse/nut croquettes from soybean or walnuts; vegetable croquettes from aubergine, zucchini or spinach - yes, the spinach dumplings can be fried as patties too), I think you may like to taste soczewiaki, Polish lentil-potato patties, too. This dish comes from north-eastern Poland.

(ingredients for 8 patties)
1/2 cup red lentils
potatoes (*see point 1.)
1 big onion
salt, pepper, optionally cumin and curry powder
flour, a bit
garnish: tomato slices, lettuce, parsley

1. Wash potatoes, don't peel them but cook in salted water. The best would be to peel them and leave in the fridge overnight but if not then at least for 2 hours. After that time, grate them with a vegetable grater, not necessarily very fine. Take 1 cup and 1 full tablespoon of grated potatoes - this is the dough for the patties.

2. Wash lentils carefully, until the water in which you wash them is clear. Cook washed lentils in 1 1/2 cup water, covered, on a low heat. After 20 minutes start cooking on a high heat stirring constantly, to obtain a thick lentil puree. Add salt, pepper and optionally curry powder and cumin. I say optionally, cause those last two are not an ingredient of typical soczewiaki, but in my opinion adding curry powder and cumin makes them taste much, much better.

3. Take walnut-size balls from potato puree and roll so thin as you can. You can do it in your hands. Potato dough shouldn't be sticky but you may like to sprinkle your hands with flour. Put a walnut-size ball of lentil puree on each potato sheet and hide it by closing potato sheet and roll.





4. When ready, sprinkle each croquette with some flour and deep-fry. In another saucepan, fry thinly sliced onion half-rings until golden brown.

5. Drain croquettes on a kitchen paper, put a bit of fried onion on each croquette and serve warm or cooled with fresh vegetables.

Polish rolled oats croquettes

Polish: owies
Portuguese: aveia
Scots Gaelic: coirce
Persian: یولاف
Catalan: civada
Swahili: oti
Hungarian: zab
Tamil: ஓட்ஸ்
Latvian: auzas
Albanian: tërshëra

Oats are not only horse or chicken fodder :) Don't forget: "oats are only fit to be fed to horses and Scotsmen", and "England has the finest horses, and Scotland the finest men", cause they eat oat porridge, pancakes and cookies and drink oat beer. Scotsmen and other nations of northern Europe especially, cause oats are grown throughout the temperate zones and tolerate raining moist cold weather, so even in Iceland oat cookies are made with icelandic oats :) In Poland some people prepare rolled oat savoury patties (kotleciki owsiane) for a warm evening meal.

(8 croquettes)
cup rolled oats + a handful more
1 cup water / vegetable stock
1 medium potato / 1 big champignon
1/2 cup parsley green
2 big onions
1 egg
salt, pepper, curry powder (to taste)
1 scallion
2-3 garlic cloves

1. Pour rolled oats into a bowl and add boiling water / stock. Cover and set aside for 15 minutes.

2. Chop onions, scallion, mash garlic, grate potato (or champignon). Fry all of them in a saucepan until onions are golden brown.

3. Combine soaked oats (they should absorb the whole water and become a mush) with fried ingredients, finelychopped parsley, whisked egg, salt, pepper and curry powder. Form round croquettes and roll them in the resting rolled oats. Fry in oil and serve with salad or sauce. I served it with cooked buckwheat and tomato slices.

Polish buckwheat patties

Polish: gryka
Basque: artobeltz
Bulgarian: елда
Spanish: alforfón
Hungarian: hajdina
French: sarrasin
Waloon: boûkete
Ukrainian: гречка
Slovenian: ajda
Chinese: 蕎麥

So you may think that buckwheat is eaten only as a bulgur-like porridge by eastern Europeans and Ashkenazi Jews in North America? You are so wrong! The groats may be used for Polish buckwheat-curd cheese filling for dumplings and you will find them in famous delicious Polish and German black pudding. Buckwheat flour (non glutinous!) is even more prevalent: in Slovenian nut roll (potiča); in French (Brittany) pancakes (galettes) or Russian (blini) or Slovenian ones (idinska zlevanka); in Slovenian dumplings (Žganci) or Austrian ones (Sterz; in Korean jelly (memilmuk); in Japanese noodles (soba) or Italian ones (pizzoccheri)... of course there are much more dishes that are still unknown to me... And today I am gonna show you how to prepare Polish (eastern-Polish) buckwheat-curd cheese patties, hreczniaki.

1/2 cup buckwheat
1/2 cup tvarog (fresh curd cheese)*
1/2 cup chopped parsley green
1 big onion
1 egg
1 scallion
1/3 cup flour (integral flour more than welcome) + a bit more to sprinkle
salt, pepper to taste

1. Cook buckwheat in 1 cup water (or vegetable stock) until soft but still loose (no mush!); you should obtain 1 cup of cooked buckwheat porridge

2. Mash cheese with a fork.
*If you find no East-European tvarog cheese, take any fresh white cheese, be it Turkish, Greek (feta inclusive) or anything, but not too salty. But then, control the adding of salt! I had no right cheese at the moment so I took Turkish cow milk feta-like cheese from the can and I couldn't complain about the final result!

3. Mash cheese together with buckwheat, egg, chopped and fried onion, chopped and fried scallion, chopped parsley green, salt and pepper. At the end add flour (prepare 1/3 cup and add it spoon by spoon, until you reach a right consistency, which means until you will be able to form croquettes).



4. As said above, form croquettes and sprinkle them with flour. Now they are ready to be fried. Serve warm with mushroom sauce (or any other sauce) and/ or cooked vegetables (or salad) as a dinner or serve cold with a salad.

Turkish zucchini patties

Polish: cukinia
Estonian: puhmik-õlikõrvits
Japanese: ズッキーニ
Catalan: carbassó
Portuguese: aboborinha
Malagasy: korizety
Greek: κολοκυθάκι
Icelandic: dvergbítur
Marathi: दोडके
Occitan: cogorgeta

It is great that God created zucchini! This lovely vegetable can be eaten in a sweet or savoury way. Remember Egyptian zucchini pudding? In Australia you can find sweet zucchini cake! (which I am gonna prepare as soon as I am in a kitchen with an oven...) In Poland and Russia zucchini fritters are seasoned in a sweet way, too. With sugar and sometimes honey and sour cream. Quite to the contrary, Turkish zucchini patties, mucver, contain salted cheese and savoury seasoning. I eat them sometimes for breakfast :) The ingredients are the following:

2 medium zucchinis
1 egg
1/2 cup feta cheese (or similar)
a handful chopped parsley green
a handful chopped dill
3 scallions
3 garlic cloves
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
salt, pepper, cumin

1. Peel and grate zucchinis. Sprinkle with salt and set aside for 15-20 minutes. After that, squeeze as much as you can

2. Mash cheese with well squeezed zucchini, chopped scallions, parsley and dill, mashed garlic cloves, flour mixed with baking powder, beaten egg and salt, pepper and cumin (to taste). Fry and serve warm or cooled with vegetables.

Ecuadorian green plantain stuffed fritters

Polish: plantan / banan skrobiowy
Swedish: kokbanan
Portuguese: banana-da-terra
Dutch: bakbanaan
German: Gemüsebanane / Kochbanane
French: banane plantain
French Antillais: banane farine
Korean: 요리용 바나나
Arabic: ‏موز الجنة

I have not much experience with musaceae... As the most of Central Europeans, I thought that banana is the yellow curved sweet fruit... I had no idea that besides of cavendish sort, there is a plenty of other varieties, inlcuding red bananas and plantains... But I must aware those for who this vegetable is a mysterious riddle, just like it was for me: plantain can be eaten either green or mature, while banana only mature; plantain can be eaten only cooked, baked or fried, while banana can be eaten raw. They are eaten widely as a staple food in the equator area, very often thinly sliced and fried as chips. The recipe below is more sophisticated: empanadas de verde, Ecuadorian green plantain stuffed fritters

see laso: Uzbek pumpkin puffs
see also: Cuban green plantain soup

4 green (unripe) plantains
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter (soft)
a pinch of salt
flour if needed
1 cup grated cheese
1 big onion, chopped finely

1. Peel plantains. Cook 3 of them in water with salt until soft. Grate finely the fourth one. When the three other plantains are soft enough, let them cool in the water in which they were cooked, and mash them together with the grated, raw plantain

2. In a food processor mix well plantain dough with butter, egg and a pinch of salt. Set aside and let rest for some hours (you can leave it overnight in the fridge)

3. Fry chopped onions until golden brown. Mix with grated cheese.

4. Sprinkle your workplace with flour. Take plum-size balls of plantain dough and roll so thin as you can. Fill each "pancake" with a mixture of cheese and onion. Close well with your fingers or using a fork. Set in the fridge for some time (1/2 h) and fry about 5 minutes from each side. They are absolutely delicious and the melted cheese-onion filling is just fabulous!

Polish bilberry dumplings

Polish: czarna borówka / jagoda
Lithuanian: mėlynė
Ukrainian: Чорниця
Estonian: mustikas
Northern Sami: sarri
Saterland Frisian: bikbäie
Catalan: nabiu
Irish: sméar gorm
Turkish: yaban mersini
Welsh: llus

Bilberries are one of the most favourite summer fruits of Poland. Depending on the region they are called jagody, czarne borówki, czerniny, jagodziny, czernice... The list is long :) You can buy them on a markt but many people collect them on their own in the forest, just like they do with differrent types of mushrooms. Then you can only bake bilberry muffins or typical sweet yeast buns called jagodzianki, prepare bilberry soup, kissel, jelly, cheesecake, eat bilberries with whipped cream or blended in a smoothie, with noodles and cream or as a filling to the most beloved dumplings, called pierogi. I am gonna share with you today this delicious summer recipe: pierogi z jagodami, Polish dumplings with bilberries!

(for about 20 dumplings)
dough:
1 cup flour
1/3 cup hot water
a pinch of salt
filling:
1 cup bilberries*
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon dried breadcrumbs
+ 1/2 cup sour cream
+ flour to roll

1. Sieve flour into a bowl. Pour boiling water over it and knead when it becomes bearable to handle. Add salt and knead until elastic and homogeneous. Set in fridge for 1 hour to rest.

2. For the filling, mix berries with sugar and breadcrumbs. Without breadcrumbs the filling may flow while cooking and will splash while eating all the time :)

3. Sprinkle your workplace with flour. Roll the dough so thin as only possible and using a glass, cut circles out. You may also take a bit of dough (walnut size), roll it in your hands and then roll thinly to obtain same circles

4. Fill each circle with 1/2-1 (depending on how big is your circle) teaspoon bilberry mix and join both sides of teh dough to form half-moons. You may decorate the rands the way I did or by pressing them with a fork.





5. Put the dumplings into boiling and salted water and cook 5 minutes. The dough is thin so they are ready so fast. Drain and serve with sour cream sprinkled with sugar.





*Nota bene:
you can use other fruits, too: raspberries, brambles, strawberries, sweet or sour cherries

Austrian apricot dumplings

Polish: morela
Armenian: ծիրան
Albanian: kajsi
Tajik: зардолу
Kannada: გარგარი
Greek: βερικοκιά
Chech: meruňka
Mongolian: чангаанз
Kurdish: mijmij / qeysî
Uzbek: o'rik

I don't know any recipe how to prepare prunus armeniaca in Armenian way... (suggestions more than welcome!) but for sure, one of the most delicious ways of eating apricots is Austrian Marillenknödel in Butterbröseln: apricots hidden in creamy dumpling, cooked and coated in roasted breadcrumbs. Attention! This dough is different than the one in strawberry dumplings recipe! That dough was more fluffy, light and very delicious but unluckily didn't form solid balls after cooking. If visual effects are important to you, choose this dough ;) (In Poland, Germany and Slovakia similar dumplings are prepared, but with potatoes as one of the ingredients of the dough. I will post some recipes for them soon!)

see also: Austrian strawberry dumplings

dough
200 g flour
250 g Quark (in Austria: Topfen) or fresh cheese curd of 20% fat
4 tablespoons semolina
1 egg
100 g butter
a pinch of salt
a bit of flour

filling
8 medium apricots (fresh!)*
8 cubes sugar* (the best would be brown)
50 gr butter + 1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs
powdered sugar

1. In the evening prepare the dough: combine all the ingredients and leave in the fridge overnight

2. Wash apricots, cut slightly just to take the seed off. Put 1 cube sugar into each apricot (if you don't have them, take 1 teaspoon sugar instead of each sugar cube, but never use honey! It will flow away and you will be unable to close the apricot in the dough)



3. In a pan, bring water with a bit of salt and oil to boil. Divide the dough into 8 equal portions (dough balls should be about the size of apricots - see picture above), form balls and roll them. Cover each apricot with a dough "pancake" and roll well in yur hands until you get lovely shaped balls. Put into the saucepan and cook 12-15 minutes.

4. Put dried breadcrumbs and butter (you can add a pinch of cinnamon too) into another pan. butter should melt and breadcrumbs should fry in it until golden. When dumplings are ready, drain them well and put into the pan with breadcrumbs and butter. Move the pan this way so that the whole dumplings are covered with breadcrumbs. Put on the plate and sprinkle with powdered sugar; you can serve them with cream or vanilla ice-cream.

* of course you may have bigger or smaller apricots... the main rule is: so many sugar cubes as many apricots you have. I also suggest to not take the huge, apple-sized apricots. Walnut-sized are perfect.

Egyptian-style fish

Polish: ryba
Erzya: калт
Abkhazian: аҧсыӡ
Tatar: balık
Somali: kaluun
Navajo: Łóó'
Uyghur: بېلىق
Bashkir: балыҡ
Tajik: моҳӣ
Burmese: ငါး

-> fish (I used Lachsforelle - a kind of trout with pink, salmon-like meat)
-> marinade: salt, cumin, garlic, lemon juice, flour
-> rice, onions
-> tahina, vinegar, parsley, grlic

1. Clean the fish and throw away everything that has to be thrown. Clean the skin of the fish with a knife. Cut the fish into portions and cut the skin of each portion.

2. Prepare spices: mix about 2 teaspoons salt with same amount of cumin, add 5-6 minced garlic cloves and so much lemon juice until you obtain a spreadable cream. Spread it on the fish skin and put into the holes you cut on the skin same as inside the fish. The best would be to put the fish to the fridge overnight, but if not, some hours are enough.





3. You should not eat fish with other rice than onion rice :) So cut onions finely into chunks and fry until slightly brown. Put in a saucepan and cook with 1 cup water. When boiling, add washed rice (as much as you want but let's say 2 cups of rice + 2 medium onions) and so much water so that there are about 2 cm water over the rice surface. When it starts boiling, simmer on a low heat until ready.

4. Sprinkle fish chunks with flour and fry. Serve with onions rice and tahina cream mixed with vinegar, water, chopped parsley and minced garlic.

Palestinian mutton-rice-vegetables dish

Polish: baranina
Portuguese: carneiro
Norwegian: lammedeig
Russian: Баранина
Dutch: schapevlees
Danish: fårekød
Czech: skopové
French: mouton
Breton: kig-dañvad
Shona: nyama yehwai

Makluba (مقلوبة) is a Palestinian dish from mutton, rice and vegetables, but as far as I know eaten also in the rest of Levant countries. In Arabic its name means nothing else but... "upside down", and Spaniards call it "arabic paella". Factually, there are many similarities between those two dishes: both contain similar ingredients (rice, vegetables, meat) cooked in one pan and were rather a poor dish, prepared from the resting pieces of meat and differrent vegetables. Today it is eaten usually on fridays and served to the guests to offer them respect and honour. But why is it called "upside-down"? After cooking, you should invert the content of the pan into a plate. If you are lucky, it will conserve the shape of the pan, but mine didn't. Anyway, taste counts ;)

(ps. the pics are of a bad quality; I am sorry for that, but you have to believe me, this dish tastes wonderful even for me, who never liked meat too much)

2 medium aubergines
2 big tomatoes
1 medium couliflower
1 big onion + 1 small onion
1/2 kg mutton shoulder*
1 1/2 cup basmati rice
cumin

1. Chop the small onion, fry until smelling and golden, add mutton (*I had about 3/4 kg mutton with bones and after cooking and throwing the bones away, there was 1/2 kg meat), fry a little bit and cook in 1/2-3/4 l water until soft

2. Peel and slice aubergines, sprinkle with salt and set aside until drops appear on its surface. Drain with a kitchen paper towel or with your hand, and fry

3. Divide cauliflower into chunks, cook for a very short time (about 5 minutes) in water with salt cumin


(beginning with tomatoes and moving as a clock needle: tomato slices, fried eggplants, mutton chunks, mutton broth, eggplants being drained, fried cauliflower chunks)

4. Wash rice, divide meat chunks from the broth

5. Prepare the pan: put some spoons of the fat that swims on the surface of your broth or spread some spoons oil, and cover the bottom of the top with thick slices of the big onion. This is actually my invention cause I like the taste of onions and here onions serve as a protection layer instead of backing sheet (some people put baking sheet on the bottom of the pan, some put tomatoes). The second layer are thick slices of tomato and the third are slices of fried eggplant. Then you put 1/2 amount of washed, drained rice. Next layer should be meat, then cauliflower, then the rest of the rice and then eggplant slices.









6. When ready with the layers, pour the broth over the dish. Broth should reach the top of the last layer, if it does't, add water. Taste the broth if there is enough salt. Cover the pan with aluminium sheet and simmer until rice is ready (usually about 1/2 hour). After that try to take the makluba away as it was a cake :) You can sprinkle it with toasted pine nuts and serve with yoghurt.

Polish herring croquettes

Polish: śledź
Kashubian: stupka
Korean: 청어
Latvian: siļķes
Ukrainian: оселедець
Norwegian: sild
Georgian: ქაშაყი
Luxembourgian: hierk
Arabic: رنجة
Scottish Gaelic: sgadan

Herring has been a known staple food source since 3000 B.C. Here, in the Baltic sea region, herring is one of the most popular fishes. There are various methods of preparing it: raw, pickled, fried and even fermented... In Poland it is a must to eat herring during the lent before Easter and at the Christmas Eve Dinner, usually raw, cut into chunks with onion slices and oil. In my family we often eat this kind of herring salad for breakfast. Let me also propose a warm dinner dish: Polish herring croquettes, krokiety śledziowe.

see also: Portuguese codfish fritters

2 herring fillets, those without bones and heads, that were cured in salt (+ water + milk)
1/2 kg potatoes*
2 big onions
1 egg
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
pepper, dill
a bit of flour to sprinkle

1. Soak herrings overnight in water with a bit of milk to remove excessive salt

2. Cook potatoes (* if you want to obtain less herringy taste, take 1 kg of potatoes). Chop 1 onion and fry until golden brown

3. Using meat grinder, grind together soaked drained herings, cooked potatoes and the second onion

4. Combine the ground ingredients with breadcrumbs, chopped dill and lightly beaten egg. Add pepper to taste, you don't need to add salt cause herrings are already salty. Knead a bit.

5. Form croquettes, sprinkle with flour and fry. Serve with salads (tastes good with beetroot or raddish salad) and yoghurt with dill, parsley or chives

Chilean quinoa croquettes

Polish: komosa ryżowa
Aymara: jiwra, supha
Mapunzugun: künwa, dawe, sawe, zawe
Quechua: kinwa , kiuna, kuchikinwa
Chibcha: suba, pasca
Lithuanian: bolivinė balanda
Russian: рисовая лебеда, киноа
Swedish: mjölmålla
Norwegian: perumelde
Greek: κινόα

Quinoa is a pseudocereal (just like buckwheat and amaranth) and was cultivated in South America even 5.000 years before. Together with potatoes, it was a staple food in Andean region before Incan Empire. Incas called them "mother of all grains"; until today in many countries quinoa has an alternative name: peruvian or incan rice (German: Inkareis / Perureis, Polish: ryż peruwiański, Spanish: trigo inca, arroz del Perú). Scientists say that without quinoa there would be no human being possible to live in the Altiplano. The mystery of its power is that quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete food. Try these Chilean quinoa croquettes (croquetas de papa y quinoa), they are really worth it!

1 cup cooked, mashed potatoes
1 cup cooked quinoa*
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped onions
a handful of parsley
a pinch of cummin, salt and pepper

1*. You don't need any advice how to cook and mash potatoes, don't you? :) About quinoa: take about 1/2 cup dried grains, wash them well under running ater or soak for some hours (cause it contains bitter-tasting saponins) and cook with 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup milk for about 5 minutes, after that time reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes until the grains are transparent. Don't add salt!

2. Whisk the egg, drain quinoa, chop parsley finely. Combine all the ingredients, now it is time to add salt too; form croquettes, and fry them (no need to sprinkle with flour before frying)

German tuna pasta

Polish: tuńczyk
Turkish: ton balığı
Catalan: tonyina
Latvian: tuncis
Rapanui: kahi
Lithuanian: paprastieji tunai
Arabic: تونة
Japanese: マグロ
Russian: тунец
Thai: ปลาทูน่า

People were fishing tunas even in the antiquity, while canned tuna was eaten since the beginning of XX century. Now, the canned version is eaten especially among students and diet-watchers. I learned this simple dish when I was studying in Germany. If yiu have not much time but wanna eat something tasty, prepare this: Thunfisch-Nudeln.

about 500 gr noodles (or less)
1 canned tuna (better without oil)
1 cup tomato puree (packed or made on your own from fresh tomatoes)
2 big onions, 2 garlic cloves
a handful parsley
salt, pepper
grated cheese

1. Cook noodles the way you always do, chop onions and parsley finely and grind garlic

2. Fry onions and garlic until golden, add tomato puree and stew some minutes, until tomato puree is thicker. Add drained tuna, stew a bit more. Season with salt, pepper and parsley to taste

3. Combine cooked noodles with tuna sauce and sprinkle with grated cheese before serving

Polish potato-walnut fritters

Polish: orzech włoski
Saami: niehtti
Estonian: kreeka pähkel
Romansch: nose
Swiss German: Baumnuss
Kurdish: gûz
Irish: gallchnó
Turkmen: грек хозы
Greek: καρύδι
Belarussian: арэх

In this post I would like to present you a very old Polish recipe how to prepare potatoes, including walnuts: kotleciki z orzechów (walnut-potato fritters). I found it once while browsing old Polish cookbooks from the time before the Second World War. Potatoes are usually prepared in Poland as various dumplings or latkes, pancakes or as a filling for pierogi (the filling can be raw grated potatoes or cooked, mashed with curd, garlic and herbs). Believe me or not but walnuts and potatoes go really well together.

1/2 kg cooked, peeled potatoes
100 gr ground walnuts
2 eggs
1/2 cup breadcrumbs*
a handful dill
salt, pepper
+ 1 egg, a pinch of salt, a handful flour and breadcrumbs and oil to fry

1. Mash potatoes and mix well with ground walnuts, add whisked eggs, finely chopped dill (or parsley, but dill tastes here much better) and breadcrumbs (* if 1/2 cup is not enough to form balls from the dough, add more)

2. Form nice balls and flatten between your hands

3. Prepare 3 plates: first with egg whisked with a pinch of salt, second with flour and third with breadcrumbs. Now do the following: cover each piece of the dough with flour, then deep in whished egg and after all, cover in breadcrumbs and fry.





This is my second contribution into Sia's Ode to Potato event. I hope it is allowed ;)