As well as any cookery books and magazines, I have notes and cuttings from various sources. Ever so often I look through these for inspiration and think “Yes, I must try that!”.
Here is a recipe for a salad that I jotted down when visiting one of my cousins in Białystok.
There was a heat wave this summer (2018) in England and Europe and during my recent trip to The Netherlands, I had lunch in the sunny garden of my friend’s older sister.
One of the dishes was a pasta salad and included an ingredient which you would find as a garnish in many Polish dishes – skwarki – small, crispy, fried, bacon pieces.
This was a wonderful addition and I think would go well in other salads too.
I recreated this dish when I got home – the exact amounts are not so important.
Ingredients
400g of cooked Penne or Macaroni
1 small tin of sweetcorn – drained
3 celery stalks
125g of smoked bacon
3 tablespoons of mayonnaise (I used full fat – which I prefer for cooked salads)
Ground black pepper
Method
Chop the bacon into small squares and place on a heavy frying pan on a medium heat until all the fat comes out and you are left with small, crispy squares.
Drain the bacon pieces from the fat and place them on some kitchen roll and leave them until they are cold.
Chop the celery into fine pieces.
You can cut the pasta into smaller pieces if you wish.
In a large bowl, mix the pasta, sweetcorn, celery and the skwarki together.
Add the mayonnaise and the ground black pepper and mix well together.
Note
You are unlikely to need to add any salt as this is provided by the bacon.
This salad will go well with cold meats and barbecued meats.
Capparis spinosa isthe caper bush. The plant is best known for the edible, unripened flower buds – capers – kapary (in Polish) which areoften used as a seasoning and are usually pickled in brine, vinegar or wine.
These perennial plants are native to the Mediterranean and some parts of Asia. Their use dates back to around 2,000 BC where they are mentioned as a food in Sumerian literature.
The caper buds are picked by hand which can make the cost of a small jar expensive.
Pickled nasturtium (Tropaeolum maius) (nasturcja in Polish) seeds – often called poor man’s capers are a good substitute.
Cooking With Capers
Capers have long been used in the Mediterranean region especially in Italian cooking.
Capers are usually added to the dish toward the end of the cooking process, to keep their shape and flavour.
Sos kaparowy – Caper sauce
This is very popular in Poland and is made with chopped capers and mayonnaise and is served with hard-boiled eggs.
The general word for pasta in Polish is makaron .. from the Italian macaroni or maccheroni which is thought to originate from the Greek makaria – food made from barley.
You need some cooked pasta – small shapes are the best – I often use Fiorelli – little tubes with lacy edges.
When I am cooking some pasta for a meal, I often do a bit more so I have some left to make a salad the next day.
Try not to over cook the pasta.
The weight of dry pasta will result in around double the weight of cooked pasta eg 250g of dry pasta will result in around 500g of cooked pasta.
I find that mayonnaise or mayonnaise based dressing are best with these salads.
Cooked vegetables work well with these salads and also tinned or bottled vegetables and so it is a good store cupboard dish.
Below are several ideas – but you can do many variations – I always use a few different colours to make it look attractive.
Pasta, Peppers & Sweetcorn Salad
400 – 500g cold cooked pasta.
1 small tin of sweetcorn, drained (or frozen loose sweetcorn – cooked)
1 or 2 fresh red peppers or 2-3 pieces of bottled peppers.
1-2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
Salt & ground back pepper
Method
In a large bowl mix the pasta and sweetcorn together.
If using fresh peppers then remove the stalk and the seeds and chop the flesh into small pieces.
Blanch the peppers by putting them in a dish with boiling water and letting them stand for about 10 minutes then drain and pat dry.
If using bottled peppers then drain them from the liquid and cut into small pieces.
Add the peppers to the salad mixture.
Mix in the mayonnaise.
Add salt & pepper to taste.
Pasta, Peas, Peppers & Sweetcorn Salad
Ingredients
400 – 500g cold cooked pasta.
1 small tin of sweetcorn, drained (or frozen loose sweetcorn – cooked)
1 or 2 fresh red peppers or 2-3 pieces of bottled pepper
150g of cooked frozen peas
1-2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
Salt & ground back pepper.
Method
Make the salad as above then add the cooked peas and mix well
Pasta, Peppers & Sweetcorn Salad with Tuna
400 – 500g cold cooked pasta.
1 small tin of sweetcorn, drained (or frozen loose sweetcorn – cooked)
1 or 2 fresh red peppers or 2-3 pieces of bottled peppers.
1 x 145g tin of tuna chunks in oil or brine – drained
1-2 tablespoons of mayonnaise (variation – add half a teaspoon of tomato puree or even hot pepper sauce)
Salt & pepper to taste – you will need less salt if you are using the tuna in brine.
Method
Make the salad as in Pasta, Peppers & Sweetcorn Salad up to the addition of the mayonnaise.
Break up the tuna into smaller pieces and add this to the salad and mix it in.
Add the mayonnaise.
Salt & pepper to taste – (you will need less salt if you are using the tuna in brine).
Variations
Add some chopped chillies to the mixture – I use green ones to differentiate them from the red peppers.
Pasta, Peas, Peppers & Sweetcorn Salad with Tuna
Ingredients
400 – 500g cold cooked pasta.
1 small tin of sweetcorn, drained (or frozen loose sweetcorn – cooked)
1 or 2 fresh red peppers or 2-3 pieces of bottled pepper
150g of cooked frozen peas
1 x 145g tin of tuna chunks in oil or brine – drained
1-2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
Salt & ground back pepper.
Method
Make the salad as in Pasta, Peas, Peppers, & Sweetcorn Salad
Break up the tuna into smaller pieces and add this to the salad. and mix it in
Salt & pepper to taste – (you will need less salt if you are using the tuna in brine).
Pasta, Peas, Peppers & Sweetcorn Salad with Polish Smoked Sausage.
Ingredients
400 – 500g cold cooked pasta.
1 small tin of sweetcorn, drained (or frozen loose sweetcorn – cooked)
1 or 2 fresh red peppers or 2-3 pieces of bottled pepper
150g of cooked frozen peas
200g of Polish smoked sausage or ham
1-2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
Salt & ground back pepper
Method
Make the salad as in Pasta, Peas, Peppers & Sweetcorn Salad.
Slice the sausage into thin slices and then chop these into halves and quarters.
Add this is to the salad and mix in
Salt & pepper to taste.
Hard Boiled Egg Garnish
1 or 2 hard boiled eggs can be chopped and used to garnish the tuna or smoked sausage salads.
Sałatka is the Polish word my parents used for salad.
However when I visited Poland for the first time I realised that there is another word for salad and that is – Surówka.
Surówka – this come from a Polish word meaning raw.
There is a distinction between the two in that a sałatka is a dish served cold of mainly cooked vegetables and a surówka is a dish served cold of mainly raw, pickled or fermented vegetables.
Some ingredients for salads for sale
As it is hard in English to differentiate between the two – I will be writing about many classic cold Polish vegetable dishes and will be calling them all salads.
Fruit, cold meats, fish, either cooked or pickled, and hard boiled eggs also feature in these salads.
A salad accompaniment with a meal is often more usual than hot cooked vegetables and a tomato or gherkin salad is normal fare for breakfast.
Vegetables that have been pickled, fermented, bottled or canned will feature throughout the year at least once a day in Polish meals. Before widespread refrigeration this is how people preserved food for use throughout the winter.
Old Polish houses always had cellars, the Polish word is piwnica, from the word piwo which means beer so it means the place where beer is kept. The ones I have seen in Poland were filled with bottled fruit and vegetables as well as jams, ready to make meals and salads throughout the year. In blocks of flats there is still in the basement level, cellar space for each flat.
My aunties said they could not imagine life without a cellar. Their cellars were filled with many jars of bottled paprika that they had prepared – what in England we call peppers or capsicums, various mixed vegetables, cranberries and lingonberries.
Paprika – Capsicum – Pepper
I am very lucky in having two cellars in my house and spent a week in spring this year organising them – including an area for tinned and bought bottled vegetables ready for making salads amongst other things.
Cellar – Mainly for Food
Cellar – Mainly for Drinks
Salad dressings
Three of the most popular salad dressings used are:
Lemon Juice
One of my cousins came to visit me a couple of weeks ago and brought me this lovely, large, glass lemon squeezer.
If lemons are scarce or expensive or for convenience in Poland you can buy packets of citric acid which you can mix up with water.
Smetana – Soured Cream
Nowadays you can find soured cream in many English stores but if there is none then lemon juice added to fresh single cream will give nearly the same result.
Mayonnaise
Although I have made mayonnaise, I tend to buy it now and my favourite is Hellmann’s – original or light (the very low fat version I think is horrid as it has a strange taste and texture). Sometimes if making the salad ahead of time I think the original is a bit better as it does not get as watery from the vegetables but mostly I use the light version.
Vegetables waiting to be made into salads
Salad Garnishes
Garnishes are chopped fine and sprinkled on the top of the dish of salad, these are often: flat leafed parsley, dill, chives, the green part of spring onions and hard boiled eggs. If none of these are available ground paprika might sometimes be sprinkled on the salad.
Journey From A Polish Kitchen 