[Sca-cooks] Re: Bigos and one stubborn Pole :>

[Kayah]

> I don't know much about the particular case of Polish cooking, but I
> find this argument unpersuasive.

The reason behind my reasoning ( :p) is this: The old Polish recipes that
are documented (cwikla, rosol, kluski, barszcz, and a couple of others I
can't recall at this moment) are mostly the same today, and are
traditionally served at the Christmas table. Bigos is also, although not
being documented until much later..  As another poster indicated - cooking
methods would be slightly different because they're not over a fire now, but
a stove.. I don't expect Bigos to be exactly the same - more of a
cabbagey-like-soupy dish with pork fat and meat bits and whatever other
leftovers that were at hand that people ate out of one bowl with spoons. I
think that the mushrooms were an addition from a bit later that someone just
happened to have in the pantry and threw them in for good measure. Bigos
encompasses any version of it as long as it's got cabbage that's been stewed
for a while... and fat of some sort.

Potatoes were actually adopted in Poland out of economic reasons around the
1700's.

Things change but significantly less than in cities or busy culture centres.
There were still parts of Poland that harvested wheat traditionally at the
turn of the last century.. with the sicle (not the scythe).. no horses. The
peasants are the ones as a whole class (not individual family fortunes) that
don't change all too much socially - for one, they continue to be on the
bottom of the social ladder. If they change, it is slow unless there is a
crisis for them to take action, in which case things change VERY quickly. In
some parts of Europe they changed much, in others... they kept their
religion.. they kept their traditions.. and they were resistant to change.
Poland and parts of Russia were (and some places still are) those.

There are newer recipes in Polish cooking that use these new ingredients..
but you'll find that a lot of them are actually imported from other
countries - France, Italy, Germany, Austria..  And then there are the dishes
considered older by the general Polish population that don't use the
ingredients that came along in the 1500's.

I'm not saying French or German or English or Italian cooking didn't change
much over time. I'm saying that my ancestry is Polish for generations back,
and as far as either side of my family can remember, there's always been a
cabbage and meat dish around. This view is practically ingrained in Poles
who live in their homeland. What Bigos is today is a part of what Poles can
truly and with confidence say is Old Polish cuisine from their father's
father's father's time, regardless of evidence. There's not that many dishes
that Polish people can say that to with confidence. And I for one will stick
to the viewpoint that Bigos did exist in one cabbagey-meat form or another,
because cabbage and a bit of lard was the only thing that people had
sometimes.

Of course, if you can show me solid evidence to prove otherwise, I'll
believe you :)
I won't argue so with foods I'm less familiar with.

Sorry for the long post everyone :p

Kay