Lingonberries – Journey From A Polish Kitchen

I recently went to a family gathering, although it was in fact a very sad occasion, it did include a lovely buffet meal.

There was a beetroot and carrot salad served, which had a lovely sweetness and seemed to me quite Polish in style.

I asked one of cousins if she knew who had made the salad and was told that this was one of the dishes supplied by a local “deli” in Consett.

So I have had a go at making this and made one with beetroot and another with red cabbage – both delicious.

Serve with cold meats and Polish style sausages or roast pork or grilled lamb chops.

Sweet Red Dressing

I made the same dressing for both of the salads – using redcurrant the first time and lingonberry the second.

Ingredients

Around 200g (7-8 tablespoons) of either Redcurrant jelly, Lingonberry jam or Cranberry sauce.
Juice of one lemon.

Method

Put the jelly/jam into a small saucepan.
Add the lemon juice.
Heat gently and stir with a wooden spoon.
Keep stirring until the ingredients have combined and you have a thick liquid.
Leave to cool before use.

Beetroot & Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Boiled beetroots – I used 2 vacuum packets
2 Carrots

Method

Chop the beetroot into small chunks or cubes.
Grate the carrots using the coarse grater.
Mix the beetroot and carrots together.
Pour the dressing over them and mix well.
*
I found that this was better if it was left for many hours as the beetroot really absorbs the dressing.
You can add the dressing to the beetroots first and leave overnight and then add the carrots the next day.

Instead of chopping the beetroot you can grate it using a coarse grater.

Red Cabbage & Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Half a red cabbage
2 carrots

Method

Grate the red cabbage using a coarse grater.
Grate the carrots.
Mix the red cabbage and carrots together.
Pour the dressing over them and mix well.
*
This is also better when left for several hours before serving.

Note

Both keep well for several days in a covered glass or plastic container in the fridge.

These biscuits are not at all Polish in origin – I like to think of them as a Scottish & Polish Alliance!

Cranberries & Lingonberries

Cranberries and lingonberries grow wild in acidic bogs around many forests in Poland and especially in the countryside where my father lived, in what was North East Poland before the war.

Cranberries & Lingonberries belong to the genus Vaccinium and the plants are small, low growing, evergreen shrubs.

Cranberries in central and northern Europe are Vaccinium oxycoccos , whilst Vaccinium microcarpum or Vaccinium macrocarpon are to be found in the USA.

Lingonberries are Vaccinium vitis-idaea .

The berries of the cranberry are larger and oval.

The berries of the lingonberry are round and much smaller than the cranberry, about a third or quarter of the size.

Image of lingonberries taken from Wikipedia

The Polish for cranberry is żurawina, the word comes from żuraw which means a crane – so the same as the English word, as parts of the plant reminded people of the bird.

The Polish for lingonberry is borówka or borowina, both these names contain the part bor which means (from) the forest.

Notes

1 -There are dozens of different names in English for lingonberry which in fact comes from the Swedish name.

2- The commercially grown dried cranberries used in this recipe were grown in the USA.

Oats

Oats (Avena sativa) – owies in Polish, are grown in Poland but for this recipe I have considered them Scottish!

Royal Scottish – Polish Alliance!

The mother of Bonnie Prince Charlie(1720-1788) was – Maria Klementyna Sobieska(1702-1735) – she was the granddaughter of the Polish King Jan III Sobieski(1629-1696) and she married James Stuart(1688-1766), The Pretender.

In March 2016, The Scotsman printed an article titled

Scotland and Poland a 500 year relationship.

Some of the facts & figures below are taken from this.

More Polish nationals now live in Scotland than any other group from outside the UK and the two countries share a rich history.

The links were forged back in the late 1400s when trade agreements were established between Aberdeen and the old Baltic seaport of Gdańsk.

Under King Stefan Batory(1533-1586), Scottish merchants became suppliers to the royal court in Kraków and grain and timber from Poland was traded with Scotland.

Many Scots moved to Poland to seize new business opportunities and buried in St John’s Archcathedral in Warsaw is Alexander Chalmers (written as Czamer) , from Dyce near Aberdeen, a judge and four times mayor of Warsaw between 1691 and 1703.

There are many surnames in Poland which are Scottish in origin such as: Machlejd (MacLeod), Makolroys(MacElroy) and Szynklers(Sinclaire).

Around 38,000 Polish soldiers were stationed in Scotland after the fall of Poland in WW2 and many of those who were unable to return to their homeland after the end of the war stayed and it is estimated that around 2,500 Polish-Scottish marriages took place around this period.

There was a wave of immigration in the 1980s with the declaration of Martial Law in Poland and then again after 2004 when Poland joined the European Union.

One of the most popular brands of tea sold in Poland is Yellow label which was created by Sir Thomas Lipton( 1848-1931) who was from Glasgow, Scotland.

Since 1995 Krakòw has been twinned with Edinburgh.

Ingredients

100g butter or block margarine
100g granulated sugar
5ml of golden syrup
5ml of boiling water
100g of self raising flour
100g of rolled oats
50g of dried cranberries

Method

Pre-heat the oven to GM 5 – 190°C.
Grease at least 2 baking trays – (you will have to take the biscuits off when they are cooked and re-grease these tins.)
Place the butter or margarine in a pan with the granulated sugar and heat slowly so that the butter is melted.

Add the teaspoon of golden syrup and then the teaspoon of boiling water and mix well together.
Take the pan off the heat, add the flour and oats and mix this together.
Then mix in the cranberries.
Using your hands, make small balls and place them on the trays, leaving space around them as they will spread.

Place in the oven and bake for around 8 – 10 minutes, watch them carefully as they suddenly seem to catch & burn.
I often look at them half way through and flatten them with a spatula.

Take them out of the oven and leave them to cool a little before you use a spatula to take them of the trays and leave them to fully cool on a wire cooling rack.