Tag: Sałatka

Turnips – 3 Ways!

White turnip – rzepa in Polish – is Brassica rapa, a root vegetable of the cabbage family.

 

3 Ways

  1. Raw & grated –  in a salad – surówka
  2. Cooked  & cold  – in a salad – sałatka
  3. Cooked & hot   – as a vegetable, side-dish with a meal

Raw & cooked, white turnip can be used instead of  celeriac or kohlrabi as in all of my posts:

Celeriac salads & More Celeriac salad recipes

Kohlrabi salads.

Various dressing can be used: lemon juice, soured cream, mayonnaise and yoghurt on their own or in various combinations.

Turnip, Carrot & Apple salad

Ingredients

2 Turnips

2 carrots

2  red skinned apples such as Braeburn or Pink Lady

Juice of 1 lemon

Salt & pepper to taste

 

Method

Peel and coarse grate the turnips and carrots.

Core the apples and chop into small pieces.

Mix them all together wth the lemon juice.

 

Cooked Turnip Salad – 1

Ingredients

2 turnips

2 carrots

Around 100g of cooked frozen peas

2 -3 tablespoons of mayonnaise (full fat is best for cooked vegetables)

Salt & pepper to taste

Method

Peel the turnips & carrots and steam them.

Chop them into rough cubes.

Mix them with the cooked peas and the mayonnaise

 

 

 

Cooked Turnip Salad – 2

As above with the addition of  3 to 4 chopped gherkins

 

Cooked Turnip – served hot

Peel and steam the turnip – not too much you do not want a watery pulp.

Rough mash the cooked turnip.

Serve hot with a variety of toppings.

Skwarki  – crispy smoked bacon bits

Chopped bacon is heated in a fryng pan until all the fat is released and the bacon pieces are crispy.

 

 

Slightly charred onion bits

Chopped onions are gently cooked in a little butter and then slowly heated until they are slightly charred.

 

 

Buttered breadcrumbs – à la polonaise.

 

 

Bean Salad

Bean Salad with Apple & Hard-boiled Eggs

As I was trying out some herring salads I came across the following mixture which worked so well together.  I decided it would make a good salad mixture on its own.

Originally this would have been made with soaked and then boiled haricot beans  – for ease I use a tin of baked beans from which the sauce has been washed off.

Ingredients

1 tin of haricot beans (tinned beans (410g) with the tomato sauce washed off , rinsed and patted dry).

1 thinly sliced then chopped onion

2 chopped (red skinned) apples

3- 4  chopped hard-boiled eggs

2-3 tablespoons of  mayonnaise ( full fat is the best here)

Salt & pepper to taste

 

 

 

 

Method

Prepare all the ingredients

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl.

You can sprinkle chopped flat-leaved parsley on top when serving.

 

 

 

 

 

Herring Salads

Salted herrings are very, very popular in Poland, they have been a staple in Northern Europe since Medieval times as this was the way to preserve and transport fish – usually in barrels.

Śledź is the Polish word for herring.

Matjes herrings (matjasy in Polish) are young herrings which are caught throughout May and June before they start spawning in July.

The way that they are prepared originated in The Netherlands and the name comes from the Dutch word maagd which means maiden(because they are young fish).

Often you will see the phrase à la matjas – this means that they are in the style of the matjes herring but they will be a slighty older fish and not as expensive .

Salted herrings need to be soaked, often for up to 24 hours, in water to remove some of the salt.

I have used already prepared à la matjas herrings and I think they are still too salty – so I take the fillets out of the oil they are packed in and put them in milk for 10 to 15 minutes (you can do longer) and then pat them dry and slice them.

 

These herring salads are often served as an hors d’oeuvre (zakąska in Polish – something to bite after), appetizer, entrée or starter.

They are usually one of the dishes served at Wigilia (Christmas Eve).

Thinly sliced onions are a must to serve with the herrings!

Simple Herrings 1

Ingredients

  • Thinly sliced herrings
  • Thinly sliced onion
  • A little lemon juice

Simple Herrings 2

Ingredients

  • Thinly sliced herrings,
  • Thinly sliced onion
  • Chopped gherkins (ogórki).
  • A little liquor from the gherkin jar

Simple Herrings 3

Ingredients

  • Thinly sliced herrings,
  • Thinly sliced onion and
  • Sliced (red skinned) apple
  • A little lemon juice

Herring Salads

The dressings used are: lemon juice, mayonnaise (full fat is best here), soured cream and horseradish – on their own or as a mixture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have not given quantities – exact amounts are not critical.

Herring & Apple Salad

Ingredients

  • Thinly sliced herring
  • Thinly sliced onions,
  • Chopped (red skinned) apples
  • Dressing

Herring & Potato Salads

The following salads are variations on  classic Polish potato salads.

Herring, Potato & Gherkin

Ingredients

  • Thinly sliced herring
  • Thinly sliced onions
  • Cold boiled or steamed,chopped potato,
  • Chopped gherkins
  • Dressing

 

Herring, Potato, Gherkin & Hard-boiled Eggs

Ingredients

  • Thinly sliced herring
  • Thinly sliced onions
  • Cold boiled or steamed,chopped potato,
  • Chopped gherkins
  • Chopped hard-boiled eggs
  • Dressing

 

Herring, Potato & Peas

Ingredients

  • Thinly sliced herring
  • Thinly sliced onions
  • Cold boiled or steamed, chopped potato,
  • Cooked peas
  • Chopped hard-boiled eggs
  • Dressing

Herring, Potato, Peas & Hard-boiled Eggs

Ingredients

  • Thinly sliced herring
  • Thinly sliced onions
  • Cold boiled or steamed, chopped potato,
  • Cooked peas and dressing
  • Chopped hard-boiled eggs
  • Dressing

Herring, Apple, Bean & Hard-boiled Eggs

When I first saw this recipe I was not sure how the beans would go with the rest of the ingredients.  Having tried it,  I think the taste combination is wonderful!

Ingredients

  • Thinly sliced herring
  • Thinly sliced onions
  • Chopped (red skinned) apples
  • Haricot beans  – tinned beans  with the tomato sauce washed off , rinsed and patted dry
  • Chopped hard-boiled eggs
  • Dressing

Chopped parsley & chives

All of the salads can have chopped flat-leafed parsley and/or chives sprinkled on top.

Flat Leaved Parsely

 

Updated April 2020

Salad With Leeks

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 called  ser zółty  – yellow cheese and is of the semi-hard type such as Edam, Gouda or Massdam from the Netherlands  which 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.