Pasta and cheese casseroles were recorded in the 14th century in Italian cookbook.
This recipe would be described as makaron z serem in Polish.
In 1802, Thomas Jefferson, the American President, served “a pie called macaroni” at a state dinner.
In 1824, an American cookbook, The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph (Jefferson’s daughter) included a dish of macaroni, cheese, and butter, layered together and baked in a hot oven.
This was the start of the American classic – Mac & Cheese.
Most recipes use a thick cheese sauce with boiled pasta.
Here the pasta is boiled in milk and water and a cheese sauce is not used.
Cheddar or Gouda cheese has been used rather than Parmesan.
Ingredients
225g macaroni (or other small pasta shapes)
130g butter
230g of Cheddar or Gouda cheese
600ml milk
1 litre of water
50g of fine white breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper to taste
Method
Grate the cheese.
Divide the cheese into 2 portions – 60g and 170g
Use a large pan and bring the milk, water and some salt to the boil.
Drop in the macaroni and boil till tender stirring occasionally.
Watch carefully so the liquid does not froth and boil over.
Melt 30g of the butter in a small saucepan.
Drain the macaroni and put it back in the warm saucepan.
Mix in the 100g of butter and the 170g of cheese with the macaroni.
Stir in the pepper.
Place in an oven proof dish.
Mix the 60g of cheese with the breadcrumbs and sprinkle on top.
Pasta and cheese casseroles were recorded in the 14th century in an Italian cookbook.
In 1802, Thomas Jefferson, the American President served “a pie called macaroni” at a state dinner.
In 1824, an American cookbook, The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph (Jefferson’s daughter) included a dish of macaroni, cheese, and butter, layered together and baked in a hot oven.
This was the start of the American classic – Mac & Cheese.
This is an old English Victorian recipe.
Here the pasta is boiled in milk and water, and a cheese sauce is not used.
Ingredients
225g macaroni
130g butter
230g of Cheddar cheese
600ml milk
1 litre of water
50g of fine white breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper to taste
Method
Grate the cheese.
Divide the cheese into 2 portions – 60g and 170g.
Use a large pan and bring the milk, water and some salt to the boil.
Drop in the macaroni and boil till tender stirring occasionally.
Watch carefully so the liquid does not froth and boil over.
Melt 30g of the butter in a small saucepan.
Drain the macaroni and put it back in the warm saucepan.
Mix in the 100g of butter and the 170g of cheese with the macaroni.
Stir in the pepper.
Place in an oven proof dish.
Mix the 60g of cheese with the breadcrumbs and sprinkle on top.
Pierogi leniwe – means lazy pierogi or lazy dumplings.
I wrote about kopytka – Polish potato dumplings a good while back and these have the same shape.
Traditional recipes use twaróg – Polish curd cheese – I use my own yoghurt cheese. I have found that you can use crumbly, white, mild, English cheeses such as: Cheshire, Lancashire or Wensleydale.
They can be served savoury or sweet – with melted butter, à la Polonaise(buttered breadcrumbs) or skwarki (crisp, fried, small squares of bacon) or sweet with a cinnamon sugar mixture.
Ingredients
400g of twaróg (curd cheese), yoghurt cheese or a white, crumbly cheese.
3 egg yolks
160 – 200g of plain flour
½ teaspoon of salt
Method
Mix the yolks with the cheese.
Add the salt
Weigh out the flour to give an idea of how much is needed – this will depend on the cheese and the size of the eggs.
Add the flour and mix first with a wooden spoon and then by hand, you might not need all the flour or you may need more.
Mix until you have a soft dough.
Divide the dough into quarters and using a floured board shape the dough and roll it with you hands until you have a long sausage about 3cm in diameter. If the dough sticks to the board then you need to add more flour.
Use a sharp knife to cut the dough into pieces, make the first cut at a diagonal and make the thickness about 1 to 1.5cm. You will get a sort of oval shape.
Repeat this with the rest of the dough.
Fill a large pan with water, add some salt and bring this to the boil.
When the water is boiling, add the dumplings one by one, do not over fill the pan or they will stick together. I tend to do around 8 at a time.
As they cook they will float to the surface, give them about another minute and then remove them with a slotted or a perforated spoon and put them in a colander.
I have a colander sitting in an empty pan by the side of the large pan in which I am boiling the dumplings.
I find that the maximum from putting them into the water to taking them out will be 3 minutes, if you cook these too long they will start to fall apart.
Here served as suggested above with melted butter and with skwarki (crisp, fried, small squares of bacon).
Served on –
J & G Meakin – Topic – around 1967
Wedgwood – Chelsea garden – early 21st century.
Here served à la Polonaise(buttered breadcrumbs) in a handled dish by
Rörstrand Sweden Granada Ovenware from the 1960s
They can be also be served sweet with a cinnamon sugar mixture.
I wrote about kopytka – Polish potato dumplings a good while back.
Since then I have tried another version which uses cheese as well as potatoes.
Traditional recipes use twaróg – Polish curd cheese – I have found that crumbly, white, mild, English cheeses such as: Cheshire, Lancashire or Wensleydale are also good.
Whilst looking at many recipes, I saw that the proportions of boiled potatoes to cheese varied greatly.
I have gone for roughly equal weights of boiled starchy potatoes to cheese.
The exact amounts are not critical but you must use starchy potatoes such as King Edward or Maris Piper.
Serve with either melted butter, à la Polonaise(buttered breadcrumbs) or skwarki (crisp, fried, small squares of bacon) or a hot sauce such as mushroom.
Ingredients
300g of boiled starchy potatoes
300g of twaróg (curd cheese) or white, crumbly cheese such as Lancashire
2 egg yolks
160 – 200g of plain flour
Salt
Oil to add to water for boiling
Method
Use a large bowl and put the cold boiled potatoes into the bowl.
Crumble the cheese and add it to the potatoes and mash them both together.
Add the yolks to the mixture.
Add a little salt.
Weigh out the flour to give an idea of how much is needed; this will depend on the type of potato and the size of the eggs. Add the flour and mix first with a wooden spoon and then by hand, you might not need all the flour or you may need more. Mix until you have a soft dough.
Divide the dough into quarters and using a floured board shape the dough and roll it with you hands until you have a long sausage about 3cm in diameter. If the dough sticks to the board then you need to add more flour.
Use a sharp knife to cut the dough into pieces, make the first cut at a diagonal and make the thickness about 1 to 1.5cm. You will get a sort of oval shape.
Repeat this with the rest of the dough.
Fill a large pan with water, add some salt and bring this to the boil.
When the water is boiling, add the dumplings one by one, do not over fill the pan or they will stick together. I tend to do this in 4 batches.
As they cook they will float to the surface, give them about another minute and then remove them with a slotted or a perforated spoon and put them in a colander. I have a colander sitting in an empty pan by the side of the large pan in which I am boiling the dumplings.
I find that the maximum from putting them into the water to taking them out will be 3 minutes, if you cook these too long they will start to fall apart.
Served on –
Royal Douton – Carnation – 1982 – 1998
J & G Meakin – Topic – around 1967
Wedgwood – Chelsea garden – early 21st century.
Here served as suggested above with melted butter, with skwarki (crisp, fried, small squares of bacon) and a gulasz.
These zrazy are like the ones made with braising beef in that the minced meat mixture surrounds various stuffings.
The minced meat mixture is similar to kotlety mielone & pulpety – but zrazy are cooked differently.
You take a large handful of minced meat mixture , place the stuffing on it and then close up the mixture so you have an oval shape with the stuffing on the inside.
Ingredients
500g minced beef
1 beaten egg
4 tablespoons of semolina
1 onion chopped and fried
Salt & pepper
plain flour for coating
Sunflower oil for frying
Stock
500ml of chicken stock
1 -2 bay leaves
3-4 Peppercorns
2-3 Allspice berries
Stuffing
Two stuffings often used are –
Pieces of bottled peppers
Sticks of Gouda cheese or similar
Method
Pre-heat the oven to GM 3 – 160°C
Mix the beef, fried onion, egg and semolina together.
Season with salt & pepper.
Divide the mixture into around 6 pieces
Flatten out each piece and place the stuffing in the centre.
Close up the mixture around the stuffing to make an oval shaped ball.
Dust the ball with plain flour.
Lightly seal these by browning then in hot oil.
Place the zrazy into an oven proof dish – one that has a lid – so they are not touching.
Pour in the stock – enough to have some at the bottom but do not cover the zrazy.
Put the lid on and cook in the oven for 1 -2 hours.
Sauce
You can thicken the stock that the zrazy are cooked in with cornflour or you can add other ingredients such as fried mushrooms and soured cream when you come to serve them.
Two shown here – cut through – one with cheese & one with peppers, served with a mushroom and soured cream sauce.
The recipe for this salad with leeks was given to me by one of my cousins in Białystok, Poland.
This salad goes well with cold meats & smoked Polish sausages, but with all its ingredients it can even be a little meal on its own.
Vegetable names in Polish
Leek in Polish is por & in Italian it is porro
Many vegetable names in Polish have origins in Italian, this is because when, the Italian Princess, who became Queen Bona of Poland on her marriage to King Zygmunt the Old, came to Poland in the 16th Century with her chefs she introduced many vegetables into the Polish diet – the most notable being the tomato. Because of this many of the Italian names or slight variations of them have become the names used in Polish.
There is also Włoszczyzna – which means Italian stuff – is it used in Polish cookery all the time – it translates as soup vegetables and is mixture of: carrots, celeriac or celery leaves, leek or onion, parsnip or parsley root & parsley leaves & sometimes savoy cabbage which is used as the base for many soups and casseroles. When written in a recipe every Polish cook will know what it is though some may have different versions of the mixture.
Although this is not an old Polish recipe it is certainly in the traditional Polish style with cooked vegetables and hard boiled eggs.
The chopped hard boiled eggs to garnish is very much in the tradition of à la polonaise.
Cheese is used in this recipe and is the type that is calledser zółty – yellow cheese and is of the semi-hard type such as Edam, Gouda or Massdam from the Netherlandswhich you can buy in England.
Gouda – The Last Thursday In August – 2013
The last Thursday in August is always the last cheese market of the year in Gouda.
Red kidney beans and sweetcorn are also used in this recipe. Now my father would never eat sweetcorn – he considered it fit only for animal fodder – as this was what it would have been used for in his youth!
Ingredients
You can vary the quantities to what you have available – the ones below are for guidance.
2 leeks – the white part finely chopped
1 tin of red kidney beans – drained
I small tin or half a large tin of sweetcorn – drained
“Yellow” cheese such as Edam, Gouda or Maasdam – chopped into small cubes
2 hard boiled eggs – very finely chopped or grated.
3 tablespoons of mayonnaise
2 teaspoons of ketchup or tomato purée
Salt & pepper to taste
Method
In a large bowl mix together the leeks, red kidney beans, sweetcorn & cheese.
In a small bowl mix together the mayonnaise and ketchup or tomato purée.
Mix the dressing with the vegetables combining it all well.
Add salt & pepper to taste.
Place the salad into a serving bowl and sprinkle the chopped or grated hard boiled eggs over the top.
The serving dish is Royal Doulton – Carnation – 1982-1998.
The origins of cheese pre-dates recorded history but one of the earliest archaeological evidence of cheese production in 5,500 BC is from Kujawy in Poland.
Seris the Polish word for cheese.
Unlike in France, Poland does not have dozens of varieties of cheese.
There are basically three types of cheese in Poland – white, yellow and smoked.
White cheese is made from curd cheese.
Twaróg is the name for curd cheese and is the most important cheese for cooking in Poland both for savoury and sweet dishes.
It is often known as ser wiejski – village cheese.
This is the cheese that both sets of my grandparents would make on a very regular basis.
Twaróg
Twaróg is made from soured milk and can be classified as a fresh acid-set cheese or as a fermented milk product. The soured milk is poured into muslin clothes and then hung up to separate the solid curds from the whey. This results in the traditional wedge shape.
Rennet is not used in its production.
In German it is called Qwark, in Dutch it is called Kwark and is similar to the French Fromage frais.
It is similar to yoghurt cheese which is made from strained yoghurt.
Science note
Soured milk and yoghurt are both produced by the action of bacteria in milk.
However it is mesophile (moderate temperature loving) bacteria which produce soured milk and thermophile(higher temperature loving) bacteria which produce yoghurt. What that means is that soured milk is naturally prevalent in cooler climates than yoghurt.
Historical note
There is evidence of soured milk production in 10,000BC and yoghurt production in 6,000BC.
Twaróg is used extensively in Polish cookery both savoury & sweet.
Recipes using Twaróg will feature in many of my future posts.
Yellow cheese is hard cheese and although there are several varieties they are very much like the Dutch cheeses such as Edam and Gouda.
Smoked cheese – the most famous is from the Tatra Mountains and it is made from sheep’s milk – it is called Oscypek.
This cheese has been made from the 15th Century.
The curds are pressed into wooden decorative shapes.
It has a protected trade name under the EU’s Protected Designation of Origin.
Some scenes of the Tatra Mountains
Zakopane is a much visited town in the Tatra mountains. Its name means dug in and it is in at the bottom of a valley surrounded by mountains.
Wooden houses typical of Zakopane
Oscypek – smoked cheese – from the Tatra Mountains – is often served grilled with cranberry or lingonberry jam.
Oscypek for sale in the streets of Zakopane
Lady selling Smoked Cheese
Smoked Cheese made with Sheep’s Milk
Some cheeses are made with Goat’s Milk
Górale – Highlanders – Shepherds from the Tatra Mountains
Folk Dancing
Folk Dancing
World Cheese Production
Some Very surprising Statistics
If anyone had asked me about world cheese production before I started this post, I would have guessed that the biggest producer in Europe was France or maybe The Netherlands. I would have been very wrong!
Looking at the figures for 2011 & 2013 for World Cheese Production in metric tonnes I found that –
The top 6 in both these years are as follows:
United States of America
Germany
France
Italy
Netherlands
Poland.
Also the United Kingdom does not feature in the top 10 at all.
Thinking about this, I of course realised that here in The United Kingdom many of the cheeses for sale are imported many from France and The Netherlands.
In recent years Polish cheeses are appearing not only in the many Polish shops in the United Kingdom but also in some of the regular supermarkets.
Journey From A Polish Kitchen 