POLES AND OTHER SLAVIC PEOPLES
The Polish people introduce us to a northern climate in which the summers are not so long as the winters. Very few of the people from the cities of Poland come to America. Those we find here are the peasant class. They have lived on farms where they raised grain and vegetables that develop during a short season, such as beans, carrots, turnips, parsnips, cabbage, lettuce, and other summer vegetables. Tomatoes are not raised, nor are they known to the people outside of Warsaw. They raise stock from which they get milk and meat. In the winter they are fond of hunting, and they know many ways of cooking game. Many spend their summers farming and their winters lumbering. Wood is used almost exclusively for fuel. Great ovens are built out-of-doors, in which quantities of food are prepared to be stored away for winter use.
Meat has a prominent place in the Polish diet, beef, veal, and pork being the kinds most commonly used. These are roasted or used in combination and boiled. Pork is perhaps the favorite kind, and they have many ways of making it into sausage and of smoking it. When smoked it is often covered with mace to add flavor. This is true not only among the Poles, but also among other Slavic people. Pork is frequently used with beef and made into puddings or loaves.
In the winter the only fresh meat used is game, and it is customary to roast this over an open fire. The skins are used for clothing, including shoes.
In very recent years only have floors been laid in the country homes, families heretofore going barefooted on dirt floors.
Fish is used fresh in summer and pickled in winter. It is rarely preserved by salting. In some restaurants of the large cities of Poland and Russia there are tanks or aquariums filled with edible fish for the enjoyment of the guests, who desigtiate to the waiter the kind of fish they prefer. It is then taken from the tank and prepared. Fish is boiled or baked, but for special occasions the best cooks prefer to make it into cutlets. Cooked fish blended with a sauce or gravy is shaped into cutlets, which are then fried or baked and served with a sauce or gravy.
Potatoes are served at almost every meal. The preferred grain among all these people is barley. The Poles use corn meal and oats also.
Eggs are the dinner dish on Wednesdays and Fridays in place of meat. Sometimes chickens or ducks are used. When a family arrives in this country, it is confronted by many new and strange appliances, such as agate and tin cooking utensils instead of copper and iron, and "so many kinds to learn how to use"—double boilers, "funny egg beaters that you turn as you do a hand organ," bread pans, and egg poachers. Then there are "stoves with no fires in them and no place for the wood, just holes in irons and if you turn a handle and apply a lighted match fire comes."
The clothing is queer, too. Hats made of straw or felt are such wonderful things compared with kerchiefs. Other clothing seems of such light-weight material, even in winter.
When the man of the family gets his first job, it is as a laborer, sometimes building our railroads, bridges, or subways. He generally carries his noon luncheon, and it consists of bread broken from a loaf, either round or oblong, according to which was the more convenient shape to fit the oven. With this he may have some bizos, if he is Polish. Bizos is made of two kinds of sausage, red and white, sauerkraut, tender beef, pork, and barley, all boiled together until thick, and known as pudding. When cold it is sliced and eaten, or it may be warmed. The laborer has no place to warm it, so eats it cold.
In his own country bizos was one of the luncheon meats taken when hunting, and as he sits on the curb, or out along the railroad he is helping to build, he enjoys his lunch, accompanied by memories of one of those hunting expeditions and the friends who were with him.
The family diet slowly changes from flour gruel and potatoes with coffee for breakfast to coffee and rolls or coffee, rolls, potatoes, and meat. Wednesdays and Fridays they have always had eggs for dinner. This custom they continue as long as they are able to afford it. In winter, because of the high price of eggs or because the man is out of work, they must hunt a substitute; or, what is more frequently done, eggs are left out and no substitute is provided. Flaxseed oil is their favorite fat. That is hard to find here, and this necessitates learning to use some of the vegetable oils that we have.
The Polish children and those of the other Slavic peoples come from a sturdy race. Upon arrival in this country they have round, well-shaped heads, rosy cheeks, and strong bodies. With their kerchiefs over their heads, they make fascinating pictures of health. They have had an abundance of milk and fresh air in their own countries. Here they live at first in crowded districts, and milk is counted as a drink—not something to eat. Therefore, because the family income is small, it is left almost entirely out of the diet. If these children are fortunate enough to belong to Polish families who have saved and bought land in the country, in order that the men might grow tobacco or have onion farms, then the family will keep goats and the children will have fresh air, milk, vegetables, and fruit. Otherwise they eat what the grownups have, and they pay the price. Sometimes they are constipated, with accompanying ill-feelings; sometimes they are underweight.
In cases of undernourishment among the children, it is always necessary with the Slavs, as with the other foreignborn people, to prescribe milk and to help plan the food budgets so that milk may be included in the children's diets. Among their soups children may have rosolzlazankamt, a consommé with eggs dropped in it. Eggs are beaten as for scrambled eggs, and dropped into the hot soup by small spoonfuls just before serving. They may also have chicken soup or krupnik palski, which is prepared with barley. ..Cereals are eaten not only for breakfast, cooked in milk, but often in soups or baked and served with meat. As vegetables are seldom cooked and served without meat, it is necessary not only to prescribe them, but also to show them how to make purees and to cook plain vegetables.
Kisselle is one of the desserts children like; it is made of blackberries, raspberries, or black grapes as follows: One quart of berries or grapes washed well and drained. Cover berries with cold water and cook until soft. Strain through cheese cloth. Add sugar to taste and set to cook; when boiling add two or three large tablespoons of cornstarch. Set to cool. Serve. with cream.
A constipation diet is easy to find for these people, as they are naturally large vegetable eaters. Szynka pieczona zkasza (ham roasted with cabbage) or rozbiantere dusgony (roast fowl with vegetables) illustrate how inseparable are their meats from their vegetables. Dusgony or vegetables they welcome on a diet list. Cereals in the form of coarse grains they use. These will come under the name of kasga, which is boiled in milk or baked in water, with milk and fat added during the baking to give moisture.
The diabetic patient finds consolation in the number of fish dishes known to the Polish and Russian folk. Ryba wgalarecie, or fish in jelly, is much enjoyed. The jelly is rriade with lemon and the first layer often has chopped cabbage or celery in it. When this is set, the fish, already boiled, is placed upright in it and more cooled jelly added to cover the fish. Pigs' feet in jelly is another favorite dish, made of the gelatine from the feet of the pig, with meat from the hocks. Ciely, or veal roasted or made into cutlets, may be used; also pork, or wieprzony, prepared in a number of ways. Sledy pocztomy, or maatjis herring, is often used for supper.
For nephritic patients it is hard to separate their protein from their vegetables. ..Their vegetable soups are made thick with vegetables and in this way they can be given in a diet. Zupa jarzynowa is vegetable soup made with a foundation of chicken stock and any or all kinds of seasonable vegetables added. Soup, or rosal, with makoronom or noodles cannot be included, but borszoz zabillang can be given. It is a beet soup, made by boiling both the tops and the roots of beets with the addition of fat and sour cream.
Tuberculous patients will enjoy many of the smietanie, or cream sauces, which are used for vegetables, meats, and game. Ovsyanka is a very good oatmeal soup, made as follows:
One-quarter pound whole or cracked oats and enough water for five or six plates of soup; boil with one onion till grain is soft. Strain; add a lump of butter and a little milk; serve with croutons. A few dry mushrooms (well washed) chopped fine add to flavor of soup.
A cold soup, or what we know as floating island, is made as follows:
Boil a quart of milk. Take three yolks of eggs and rub until white with one-half cup of sugar. Dilute with one-quarter cup of cold milk and add to boiled milk, stirring constantly so yolks don't curdle. Keep on slow fire until somewhat thick, but not boiling—add for flavor either cinnamon or vanilla. Before the above yolks are added, beat the whites stiff and add one tablespoon sugar, dropping whites off the spoon into the boiling milk. When milk with whites boils, remove the whites with a perforated spoon and put into a bowl. Add the soup when fixed with the yolks to the whites; set on ice and serve. This makes a good dessert.
Flaxseed oil with a small amount of lemon juice is a favorite salad dressing.
The following story illustrates how a sympathetically prescribed diet, recognizing the value of familiar national foods, aids in winning the hearts of people. A Russian woman was asked to interpret for a Ukrainian patient at a Food Clinic. She was not much interested at first, but when some of her well-known foods were mentioned, she looked up and said to the dietitian, "I only been here in this country three years, but you my sister." She then not only urged the patient to use the food prescribed, but was much more diligent thereafter in her own regimen.
Kascha
Made of whole buckwheat grain or fine barley or whole oats or millet (to be washed in many waters before using). Take one pound of grain and rub through it one whole egg. Dry thoroughly on a frying pan, stirring to prevent burning. When dry put into an earthenware dish with cover. Cover with boiling water. Add salt to taste and butter size of egg. Bake in moderate oven until done (from two to three hours). Watch to prevent burning; when edges get too dry add boiling water, pouring along edges. Favorite dish of the peasant.
Russian Hamburg Steak
Chop one and one-half pounds of beef fine or put through meat-chopper; season with salt and pepper and work in one-quarter pound of butter substitute, working it in with a wooden spoon. Flour a board and turn the chopped meat on it. Divide into eight parts, roll with a little flour into balls, and flatten into cakes about onehalf inch thick. Beat up an egg and add a tablespoon of olive oil; blend well together; dip the steaks in this and then into fine bread crumbs, being careful lest they lose their shape. Have a frying pan, one or two ounces of drippings in it; place the steaks in this and cook three minutes; turn and fry three minutes more.
Arrange in a crown shape on a chop plate and pour Madeira sauce in the center and garnish with parsley and cress. A cream sauce strongly flavored with horse radish and a little vinegar may also be used in place of the Madeira sauce.
Schavel (Sorrel Soup)
Chop fine one pound sorrel and one pound spinach. Cook in boiling water (open pot), adding salt to taste. Take two yolks of eggs in a bowl and rub with a little salt. When greens are tender (about one-half hour), stir with yolks, drop by drop, and prevent curdling. Set out to cool and then put on ice.
To serve, put into plate a tablespoon of sour cream and add cold soup, stirring cream. Add chopped, hard-boiled egg. Favorite dish for summer.
Polish Cookies
One quart of flour, two whole eggs, four more whites, six ounces sugar, one-quarter pound butter, one wine glass cooking brandy (in U. S. A. fruit juice is used). Beat the whites well; cream butter and sugar together and add whites. Knead well and roll thin. Cut in strips and then cut diagonally. Cook in boiling fat and sprinkle with sugar.
SLOVENIAN MENUS AND RECIPES
Breakfast
Coffee, bread and butter.
Breakfast is always the same.
10 A.M.
An egg, a sandwich, or a cup of milk for parents.
Fruit for children.
Luncheons
| No. 1. | Two cups rice, cooked with mushrooms, celery, onions, and spice. In cold weather, fifteen cents' worth of mixed fat and lean pork is cooked with the rice.
Water with fruit juice to drink, or the water from cooked fruit. |
| No. 2. | Buckwheat cakes, eaten with cooked, dried fruit or jelly. |
| No. 3. | Barley and beans cooked together.
Colored beans are used and must be tried to see whether they will cook in the same time as the barley. Olive oil, bacon, or sausage and a little garlic are added. |
| No. 4. | Millet (kasa) cooked in milk with sugar, then baked in the oven fifteen minutes and served with milk. |
| No. 5. | French toast. |
| No. 6. | Fried corn meal mush, with sauerkraut.
A good quality of corn meal is used, bought in Italian districts. Boiling water is poured very slowly into a dish of meal, and allowed to stand twenty minutes. Mush is fried in butter. Eaten with sauerkraut, cooked dried fruit, or honey. |
| No. 7. | Noodles with Parmesan cheese. |
| No. 8. | Noodles with baked apples. |
3 P.M.
Coffee, bread with butter or jelly.
Coffee is very weak for children—a great deal of milk is added.
Dinners
| No. 1. | Beef soup with farina dumplings. Meat—from the soup—eaten with a relish. |
Soup is almost invariably served at dinner. When a soup is made from meat stock, the only meat served is the soup meat. When there is roast for dinner, the soup is made from vegetables without meat stock. Stock for soup is made from beef with vegetables; this is strained and a variety of dumplings, noo'dles, cereals, etc., added to it.
The soup meat is served with a variety of sauces, relishes, salads. Sauces are made from onions, celery, garlic, horse radish, etc. Salads are simple combinations of endive or lettuce with an oil and vinegar dressing.
The vegetables served at dinner are usually potatoes and some more watery vegetable—turnips, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, peppers, string beans, etc.
Beef Soup Stock (For Six Persons)
Two pounds of meat with a good yellow bone, cooked in one cup water with soup greens—celery tops and roots, parsley, onion, leek, carrots, tomato—for two hours.
Quenelles (Farina Dumplings)
Cream a tablespoon of butter, add one egg and one yolk, a teaspoon of minced chives, and four tablespoons of cooked farina. Allow mixture to stand ten minutes, then make into balls the size of an English walnut and drop in the boiling soup.
Quenelles (Calf's Liver Dumplings)
Mince half a pound of cooked calf's liver; take out all the veins, skin, etc., and then mix well with two tablespoons of beef marrow or butter; add a pinch of marjoram, grated lemon rind, a clove of garlic mixed to a paste with salt, a pinch of mace, and pepper; add enough bread crumbs to make the mixture neither stiff nor thin. Bread crumbs swell in boiling, and if too many are used the dumplings will be hard. Form in balls and cook in boiling soup ten minutes.
Potato Quenelles
Boil four large potatoes, peel, and grate. Cream a tablespoon of butter, add one egg and salt, and cream again. Add the grated potato and mix thoroughly. Make balls the size of a walnut, cover with bread crumbs, and fry a golden brown in lard. Place in tureen and pour clear soup over them.
Mock Peas
Beat together two eggs, two tablespoons of flour, two tablespoons of milk, a pinch of salt and of mace, until the batter is smooth. Place lard in a saucepan, and when it is smoking hot, force the batter into it through a ricer. When it is fried a golden brown, take out with a skimmer, place in a tureen, and pour clear soup over it.
Horse Radish Sauce
Cream together one tablespoon butter and one tablespoon flour; add two cups warm soup, mix until smooth, and boil a while; then add grated horse radish and a pinch of salt, and one of grated mace.
Pickled beets are often used as a relish with meat.
Both Croatians and Slovenians have spoken of their taste for this dish of boiled meat from the soup stock, served with a variety of such sauces and relishes, as one of the main features of their diet. They believe it to be much better than the fried meats so commonly substituted for it by their people in America.
| Dinner No. 2. | Vegetable soup. Roast meat. |
Vegetable Soup
Vegetable soups are made of tomatoes or asparagus and thickened with bread crumbs browned in butter.
Roast Meat
Three pounds of beef makes meals for two days for five persons—one dinner and the next day's lunch. In winter, rabbit is served with a sour cream gravy with capers.
Bread
Plain bread is bought at the bakery. Bran bread, raisin bread, rolls, are baked at home.
Strudel is made and potice, a national cake, prepared for Christmas and Easter—rolls filled with honey and chopped nuts.
Halushky
Three cups flour, one egg, one cup water, three slices bacon, one-half pound cheese, one-half teaspoon salt. Make a batter of the flour, egg, water, and salt. Drop into boiling water like "drop dumplings," and cook about twenty minutes. Cut bacon in very small pieces, cook, and serve over the Halushky. Sprinkle with grated cheese.
Kopustal (Stuffed Cabbage Rolls)
One head cabbage, one-half pound each of pork and beef, ground, one cup bread crumbs, two eggs, one-half cup rice, two tablespoons lard.
Mix pork, beef, eggs, and bread crumbs together, mixing well; add the parboiled rice; season well with salt, pepper, and paprika. Place in crisp cabbage leaves, using toothpicks to hold together. Boil at least thirty-five minutes.
Then place in oven until brown. Keep in oven (slow) at least twenty minutes. Serve with tomato sauce. Or bake in oven with hot sauce for forty minutes.
Strudel (Noodle)
Four large potatoes, two cups flour, two eggs, one-half pound walnuts, one-half cup milk, one-quarter pound butter with sugar, cinnamon, and salt enough to flavor.
Boil potatoes, mash them when cold. Put on noodle board. Add the flour. Work until dough is smooth. Chop walnuts. Boil with milk for ten minutes. Roll the dough. Spread cooled nuts on dough. Shake a little cinnamon and sugar over entire surface. Roll up the dough. Roll up in napkin and boil from twenty to twenty-five minutes. Take out; cut in pieces; brown with butter. Sprinkle with cinnamon and powdered sugar.
RUSSIAN DISHES
Stschi
- 1 medium cabbage
- 1 cup meat stock
- 2 pounds beef brisket
- 3 pints water
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 2 onions
- 2 leeks
- 1 parsnip
- ¼ cup sour cream
- Salt
- 1 tablespoon fat
Cut the cabbage in pieces and heat in fat. Add the stock and turn the cabbage over till all is moistened. Cut the beef in dice and add to the cabbage with the water. Cook one and one-half hours. Add the onions and leeks sliced, and the parsnip cut in dice. Cook till these vegetables are done, then add the sour cream mixed with the flour. Let cook five minutes; season to taste. Serve hot with small buckwheat cakes if desired.
Steaks with Smetanye Sauce
- 1 cup sour cream
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1 tablespn. onion juice
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon paprika
- Dried mushrooms
Mix dry ingredients and make a smooth paste with one-quarter cup cold sour cream. Add the rest of the cream, which has been heated, and cook slowly till thickened. Add mushrooms that have been soaked and cook till tender. Add onion juice and stir thoroughly. (The mushrooms may be omitted.)
Cut the steak into serving pieces and sear. Put into baking dish and pour the pan gravy over. Add the sauce; cover and bake in a slow oven till the steaks are done. This sauce can be used with Hamburg balls or with fish.
Pirog Kulbak
- 2 cups warm water
- 1 yeast cake
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- Flour to make stiff dough
Make a stiff dough of the above ingredients and let rise till double its bulk; then add 2 eggs, well beaten; one-half cup melted fat. Mix in; then knead thoroughly. Let stand in a warm place till doubled in bulk. Roll out to one-half inch thick, cut in pieces to make small rolls about six inches long. Spread each one with cold boiled rice, then a layer of smoked fish (finnan haddie) or smoked roe; sprinkle with pepper and nutmeg. Double and pinch the edges together, having them at the top. Spread with beaten egg and bread crumbs. Bake in moderate oven till a light brown color.
A filling of highly seasoned chopped meat may be used, and the pirogs fried in deep fat.
Russian Salad Dressing
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- ¼ cup chili sauce
- 1 cup pimento, cut in strips
- 1 teaspoon tabasco
- 1 tablespn. tarragon vinegar
- 1 tablespoon chives cut in pieces
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Mix thoroughly and serve on lettuce.
Bortchock Consommé
To one quart of strained meat stock add one raw beet, scraped and finely chopped. Heat and, when colored, strain and serve hot.
Pierogi
Two cups flour, four eggs, one-quarter pound butter, six potatoes, three-quarters pound cottage cheese, one-quarter cup cream, four slices bacon, salt and pepper to taste.
Sift the flour; beat two eggs, and work the dough as for noodles. Then roll it thin. Cut the dough into five-inch squares. Boil the potatoes and mash them. Set out to cool. Beat two eggs and mix with the cheese and cream, adding salt and pepper to taste. When the potatoes are cold, add the cheese mixture to them and mix it well. Cut the bacon into tiny squares and fry it. Then add it to the potatoes and cheese. Now put a tablespoon of potatoes and cheese into each square of dough. Flop over, forming a three-cornered affair. Drop these into boiling water and boil for ten minutes. Brown some butter with bread crumbs and pour over the pierogi.