Pigeons

The Polish and their food

Food is important for Polaks. Apart from the fact that we need to eat and drink to stay alive, food plays an important role here.

Traditional but curious
Polaks are traditional in general, and so is their kitchen. However, Warsaw has plenty of expensive and luxurious places to eat less traditional. In fact it is popular because the people are curious. You can also see it in retail, foreign brands are very popular.

However, I have lost count of situations where someone said: "The food here is not bad but nothing beats schabowy z ziemniakami for me (pork schnitzel with potatoes). Or: "For the price of this dish I can buy 3 kilo of meat". A tad embarassing maybe, but I love to witness these situations.

Dishes
Let's pick one dish today, "gołąbki". In English: "pigeons". These cabbage rolls with meat inside are delicious. My favorite Polish dish. My mother-in-law Bozena can cook it so good, mouthwatering really.

You might think there's pigeon meat inside, but that's not the case. Right?

Let's start from scratch. It starts with this bad boy:

Kapusta

The complete kapusta (cabbage) needs to be cooked in one piece. So first find an enormous pan for this football sized kapusta.

The core needs to be cut out first. Then cook in water with a few spoons of sugar. In the meantime, prepare the meat. 

Hand mix 'kaiserka' (kaiser roll) with milk. Then add raw cut onions with beef, pork, rice, garlic, an egg, salt and black pepper.

As the cabbage leaves loosen, you can remove them one by one once cooled off. Then the stem needs to be cut out from the individual leaves. Place a piece of meat at the bottom edge of each cabbage leaf.

Then the rolling of pigeon envelopes can be done. 

Rolling, rolling rolling
Rolling, rolling rolling


Rawhide.

Now it's time to cook them in a sauce containing tomato concentrate and sour cream.
And a secret ingredient which remains classified. 

Et voila

Gołabki a la Bozenka

Seems easy and quick, but it's not. You need time to perform the art of making gołabki. 

You can wake me up in the middle of the night for these, mniam.