Christmas is coming. Christmas dishes are actually associated with Christmas Eve dinner. According to our tradition, these were most often meatless dishes, but there are always carp and herring dishes in many versions.
The main ingredients for preparing Christmas Eve dinner were - sauerkraut, dried mushrooms, vegetables, fish, flour, poppy seeds, linseed oil, honey, nuts, dried fruit. In our restaurant Specialities Regionalne and our stores, we try to make everything you need to prepare Christmas Eve in the best version available.
Where and why linseed oil - because flax was widely grown in our country and the oil obtained from its seeds was also the most available. After many years, when few people knew about flax cultivation in Poland, it turns out that it is one of the best oils in our latitude!!
Cabbage – it turns out that it has been cultivated for a very long time, the best varieties of cabbage came to us from… China. The process of pickling cabbage caused it to become a vegetable used from early autumn to early spring.
Carp – it began to appear on Christmas Eve tables only from the end of the 40s of the last century, previously it was a fish mainly consumed by the Jewish community. After World War II, it turned out that the easiest way to provide carp in times of general shortage of everything was carp.
Despite the fact that the Zator carp – bred since the 15th century is the only farmed fish protected as a regional product in the EU, in recent years there has been no care taken to properly promote this fish and appropriate breeding management. Today, carp from unique ponds in the vicinity of Zator are sold as the first carp that comes along, and it is a variety of carp that is bred in deep flowing ponds, grows in a 2-year cycle, devoid of a sweetish muddy aftertaste. Too bad!
Poppy seeds – the main ingredient of desserts, symbolized abundance. The main ingredient of poppy seed dumplings, kutia and of course poppy seed cakes.
The number of dishes on the Christmas Eve table – 7, 9, depending on the wealth of the household, 12 was to correspond to the number of apostles.
Based on our tradition, as every year we prepare pierogi with cabbage and mushrooms, uszka with forest mushrooms (a mix of dried boletus and bay boletes), jars with red aromatic borscht prepared for heating, fried carp fillets with cuts, carp pâté, and for dessert kutia, poppy seed cake and gingerbreads maturing from the beginning of November also in the form of gingerbread muffins with nuts and gingerbread slices and of course cakes heavy with dried fruit.
