Hunger

So, it appears that I have eaten headcheese, unwittingly, not entirely unintentionally and not a lot, a slice, but, you know, enough. Seeing that I am a finicky eater, wybredny, though they would be too polite to say so, my Borowicz cousins asked if there were any Polish particular I might like to try. “Kasza,” I said, or thought I said. Kasza I understand to be a dish of boiled cereal grains, buckwheat groats—gryka, which I fancied to be somehow the linguistic root for “grits.” Something like grits. A little butter, a little cheese, maybe even something sweet folded in. (Typical Polish fare, cold egg dishes and cold cuts for breakfast, śniadianie, are not to my liking.) I also remembered reading in Żeromski’s The Faithful River that kasza provided a certain insurgent food for the national soul: “He scowled at the injured man [insurgent] as the latter lifted the scalding kasha to his mouth with trembling hands and swallowed it hurriedly and with indescribable relish, burning his lips as he ate. Soon the bowl was empty, and the delicious kasha was eaten to the last mouthful.” (18-9). So, “kasza,” I thought I said. Then they asked me dark or light, which somehow, eventually, got us on to the topic of kiszka—had I misspoken and said kiszka originally?—which is a dark, blood sausage I was willing to try but much more circumspectly. I can’t recall exactly where the conversation went after that. At any rate, I’ve not yet eaten kasza, but finding myself in the meat market after our trip to Szymbark, I was pointed to dark tubes of meat product expectantly. “Would I like to try?” I gestured non-commitally at a window, and the ekspedientka shaved off some slices from a marbly, violet block of … salceson ozorowy.

It was tongue. It wasn’t bad tongue, even after I found out what it was, a little rubbery, purple, but otherwise non-descriptly mild, a lot better than I imagined tongue would taste. On this trip north, I’ve also sampled śledź, “herring,” which had every appearance of being raw, and smalec, “lard,” seasoned in this case, but still lard.  None of these staples would I have ever otherwise put into my mouth, but I have to say that they have elevated my sense of the Polish palate by not being as bad as I had originally feared. And I’ve had delicious things, too, wyśmienity. The Easter pork loin with prune filling surprised and delighted, and Elżbieta prepares an excellent meatball of ground pork shoulder around a mushroom core and a cutlet of chicken breast, breaded, pan-fried, with a thick coat of podlaski cheese. And then there are the cakes, ciastki—but we will leave those until another time and an entry all their own.

When eating experimentally, I find it helpful to actually be hungry, głodny. How much of “indescribable relish” and deliciousness attribute to genuine biological need. Hunger improves so many foodstuffs.