And here’s one of the life-saving tricks for the kitchen in summer

Cold soup for a heatwave — ingredients and method

INGREDIENTS:

• 400 g soy yoghurt
• 150 g cucumber
• 20 g mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1–2 tsp sugar or other sweetener
• 1–2 tbsp lime or lemon juice
• 50 g tofu
• 30 g oil

METHOD:

Blend the yoghurt, cucumber, mustard, salt, sugar, tofu and juice together.

While blending, slowly pour in the oil

NOTES:

Oil obviously doesn’t mix with yoghurt, which is mostly water.

But both soy and mustard contain lecithin, an emulsifier, which is why blending lets you mix the oil thoroughly into the water. Exactly the same mechanism is used for making mayonnaise from soy milk

SERVING:

Best straight from the fridge. If it’s really hot, you can serve it with ice cubes

How hot does a kitchen actually get in summer?

In summer I look at the weather forecast with more dread than at a child-support summons.

The kitchen is always at least a few, usually ten degrees hotter than outside. Lucky me that during the last heatwave, when it hit 38°, we had no guests. And for the next event the forecast says a fairly moderate twenty-something degrees.

On top of the heat in the kitchen there’s high humidity. For ****’s sake, no need to fly to exotic countries, you’ve got the tropics right there at work.

And of course kitchens have extractor hoods over the stove, but when it’s hot outside, they mainly pull out the water and oil vapour from above the pots, and the particles rising from them while you cook — the temperature barely drops.

How do you cool down in a hot kitchen?

If you can’t cool the room, you can cool yourself. A water spray bottle, say, or soaking your cap. But the king of these methods is the wet T-shirt.

The best way to cool down in a hot kitchen is a wet T-shirt, soaked in cool water.

What counts as real work?

That’s the kitchen. Hard, tough, chop or die… That’s proper work, not ******* about with nonsense.

This is what I’d do, I’m no techno-utopian, but I believe in what technology can do and it could already be done:

First, an hour of hard work, not necessarily in a kitchen. A tram driver doesn’t have it easy either, or a Lidl checkout girl (even now they no longer have to wear nappies to work). And only then an hour of ******* about with nonsense.

Most of the intelligentsia and LinkedIn experts, if they swung a shovel for a few hours, wouldn’t have the strength left for ******* about with nonsense online. The strength would be with working people, the grafters, for whom 8 hours of ******* graft is the norm.

By the way, I’ve got a second point for the definition of what real work is.

Reminder of the first: real work is work your smartwatch registers as a workout

The second: work during which you’ve no time for ******* about with nonsense online.

So is your job real work, or at best a bullshit job?

Or, the horror, are you a LinkedIn expert?

Questions you’d ask anyway

What thickens a cold soup without cream?
Nothing. Tofu and soy yoghurt bring the body themselves, and the oil driven in by the blender turns it into an emulsion. You control the thickness with the tofu — more tofu, thicker soup.

Why doesn’t the oil separate from the yoghurt?
Because soy and mustard contain lecithin. That’s an emulsifier — it holds fat and water together, exactly like in mayonnaise. Pour the oil in slowly with the blender running.

How do you cool down in a kitchen that hits 38°C?
A wet T-shirt soaked in cool water. A spray bottle and a soaked cap work too, just not as long. The extractor hood pulls out vapour, not temperature.

What is a bullshit job?
David Graeber’s term — a job the person doing it considers pointless. My two tests: real work is work your smartwatch registers as a workout, and work that leaves you no time for the internet.

Read next:

• How to Avoid Food Poisoning in Summer — heat isn’t only about discomfort
• Five Dark Sides of Working in a Kitchen — the long version of “chop or die”
• Plant-Based Yolk Sauce — same mustard emulsion, different job
• More soups

In our kitchen world, the best motivation for good work is a good tip. If you like my recipes, leave me a tip

My social media

The ruling concerns a lawsuit filed last year by the consumer association Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg e.V. over the company reducing the size of Milka chocolate bars from 100 g to 90 g without clearly informing consumers. Milka Alpine Milk received the title of “deceptive packaging of the year 2025” from Hamburg consumers. At the same time the weight dropped from 100 g to 90 g, the price went from €1.49 to €1.99.

The judges ruled that information about reducing the product’s weight must remain on the packaging for at least four months after the change is introduced. The exact wording was left to the company. The ruling is not yet final—the company has already announced an appeal.

Let’s be honest. These practices are widespread and have existed for years under the name —downsizing—slightly and barely noticeably reducing package sizes, or often just the amount of product inside.

It’s a way of deceiving customers and sneaking through price increases people barely notice. Today the phenomenon is more often called shrinkflation, and under that name it has finally started getting wider attention. Also, since COVID, businesses using inflation and market disruptions as excuses for raising prices became so common and so painful for consumers that people finally started talking about it. FINALLY!

The Hamburg consumer organization has been highlighting the issue for quite a while in different ways.

It filed the lawsuit against Mondelez International at the end of August last year in the regional court in Bremen, where the German branch of the company is registered.

The lawsuit concerned “misleading packaging.” In the exact same package, the corporation was selling chocolate that was 1 millimeter thinner.

And come the fuck on—nobody goes grocery shopping with a caliper.

Armin Valet from the Hamburg organization said at the time:

“Many consumers have been buying Milka chocolate for years in familiar packaging and assume the amount of chocolate inside hasn’t changed. But they are being misled, because many varieties now contain only 90 grams, while the price remains the same or is even higher.”

The organization monitors the phenomenon and publishes results on a dedicated page that already contains more than 1,000 misleadingly packaged products:

Misleading Packaging List (Mogelpackungsliste)

Consumers can also report misleading packaging there themselves.

And by the way, as usual, the Germans already have a perfect word for it: Mogelpackung — “deceptive packaging.”

A related phenomenon becoming increasingly common is skimming — lowering product quality itself, for example by reducing the cocoa content in chocolate.

To be fair, producers and retailers really are struggling with the highest cocoa price increases in history over recent years. They are under pressure from rising production costs—energy prices are going through the roof too—while at the same time consumers are cutting spending harder and harder.

From a business perspective, deception becomes the most rational solution.

If “the sole purpose of business is profit maximization,” and on a broader level endless accumulation and concentration of capital, then from the perspective of a corporation any action serving that goal becomes not only acceptable but desirable.

The profits of increasingly mythical “shareholders” and “investors” become the only law and morality.

No crime is considered unacceptable if it brings more profit than losses. It only becomes “bad” when the costs get too high — for example, court penalties.

The history of the food industry is basically the history of fighting against how greed poisons all of us — often quite literally.

If we look back into history, we find the Adulteration of Food or Drink Act, the British food adulteration law from 1860. It was introduced after the uproar caused by the work of Thomas Wakley and Arthur Hill Hassall. Wakley was not only a surgeon and founder of The Lancet, but also a member of parliament raising the issue of food adulteration publicly.

At the time, common practices in the United Kingdom included:

• Bread whitened with toxic alum, with gypsum and chalk added to it.
• Milk diluted with water and thickened with flour.
• Toxic copper salts, arsenic, and chromium used to preserve and intensify colors.
• Tea mixed with leaves from other plants, and — as mentioned during parliamentary debates — even silkworm excrement.
• Coffee massively adulterated with chicory and even dark sugar.

To quote a classic, “That’s how the free market works.”

Inevitably, not only does bad money drive out good money—worse products replace better ones too.

And reducing the weight of a chocolate bar may seem trivial compared to adding gypsum to bread, but it’s the foot in the door.

If we don’t chop that foot off by slamming the door shut, we’re on the road back to exactly those kinds of practices.

Which is why it’s good there are still judges in Bremen who don’t kneel before the modern monarch—big capital.

Seriously

Maybe you are a cyborg according to the prophecy of Bogdan Mielnik from Antrovis (one of two contemporary Polish sects, associated with several unexplained deaths of followers).

Why do we like fries?

Have you ever wondered why we like fries

And many different dishes that are not necessarily good for our health.

What are fries? Carbohydrates, fats, salt.

A high-calorie dish which, apart from calories, has no nutritional value, but far too much salt. And in general, it slowly kills us.

And we salivate at the very thought, like lunatics!

Because our taste preferences are pre-programmed from the moment of birth or earlier, by evolution. Evolutionarily, those who stuffed themselves with carbohydrates with a large amount of fat, in times of constant food shortage, that is, for over 90% of the history of the homo species, had a greater chance of survival than kale connoisseurs.

That is why the healthy and normal reaction to “kale chips” is to say “fuck off”.

For the same reasons, we like sweet and fatty things. Like ice cream, bars, and similar. Doughnuts! Everyone loves Fat Thursday! That’s part of being human!

An interesting issue is salt, which we all have in excess in our diets today. The fact that something is salty, in times not only of shortage but also of zero nutritional knowledge, means a greater chance of providing not only calories but also microelements. For example, magnesium necessary for the proper functioning of the nervous system.

So the best food is fatty, salty, and full of sugar…

Well, that sounds like a recipe for diabetes, obesity, and a heart attack after forty.

I am only a cook, not a biologist, but this coincidence is screaming.

Man is not the goal of evolution. Man is a side effect of evolution. Man is a vehicle for evolution. And the whole point is passing on genes. Not. The idea that the strongest survive. The naive idea of evolution that the strongest survive has nothing to do with reality. Those who survive are those who effectively pass on their genes.

And what about them once they pass them on? Around forty, the offspring are already grown up, and as we age, we inevitably begin to be a burden. So from an evolutionary point of view, it’s time to wrap it up. Cancer, heart attack, diabetic coma… Right after forty

And that was life (and death) in harmony with nature.

So, of course, thousands of diseases today are harmless or even unknown that could kill you, tigers, cold… a hundred other causes that today we can’t even imagine while writing or reading this at home, on a bus, train, car (ugh!), waiting room…

Well, ****, even a simple flu killed massively just a hundred years ago. The Spanish flu wiped out a few percent of the population.

Yeah, **** the good old days and living in harmony with nature, so I don’t know if not living in harmony with nature makes me a bad person. But it certainly makes me a reasonable one.

I love the history of food, I love stories about food, and most of all, I love when they are anchored in everyday experience.

And the story about sweet, salty, and fatty is as anchored in our everyday experience as few others. Yesterday I made a favorite cake. Of the English queen (hak-tfu), which consists mainly of sugar and fat.

And what would you eat? Such a cake or kale chips? (Yes, if someone thinks I have something against kale, then yes, they are ***** right)

Because this kind of diet based on kale chips and hummus (that’s ok) with celery and raw carrot is, you know… better not cut that carrot, just… You know… at least there will be some pleasure.

To a large extent

This is largely what the whole concept of comfort food is based on. It also shows us that all restrictive diets without sugar, without carbohydrates, without fat are also for this reason an aberration. And an act of violence against oneself, one’s own nature, one’s own humanity

So instead of fighting with the grace of an elephant, it’s better to apply to your diet an approach more like Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

And even more like modern drug policy, called harm reduction.

Using the knowledge of what and why tastes good to us.

We like things that are fatty, salty.

We also like crunchy (so the previously mentioned carrot is not entirely pointless), because it means it is fresh, so we won’t poison ourselves.

So those who preferred fresh and crunchy also survived and passed this preference to us in genes.

And for example, a good way to make such a dish more valuable is to add protein to it and base it, which is important, on unsaturated fats.

Falafel, whether we mean the “cutlet” made from chickpeas, deep-fried, or we mean the whole dish, in pita with a huge amount of vegetables (many colors and textures are also an evolutionary preference), with a fatty and salty sesame sauce.

From Perugia, in central Italy, last week, a truck full of Kit Kats set off. Destination Poland. Along the way, supplying successive countries. And it disappeared!

Interestingly, according to the official statement from Nestle, it is not known where the truck disappeared.

I’m asking more than stating here, but do such vehicles probably have GPS trackers and are monitored by logistics in real time?

Did someone decide

that the holidays are coming, so fuck it! we’ll send out a faulty truck!

I wouldn’t be surprised.

What could have attracted the thieves is that these are not ordinary Kit Kats!

12 tons, 413,793 pieces from the new Formula 1 line. If it’s associated with racing, that’s right.

Last year, Kit Kat became the official bar of Formula 1, and the bars from this line are shaped like small racing cars.

I’d smash one. Out of curiosity. Despite my very negative opinion, the topic keeps coming back to sport and advertising alcohol or unhealthy food through sport.

And here it’s a perfect match, because looking at the damage that Formula 1 racing does to the environment, the more F1 drivers eat bars (even vegan ones, because there was such a Kit Kat line), the faster they’ll get obesity and the faster they’ll be gone and the better for the planet and all beings on this planet.

And the theft is probably the work of organized crime.

And not activists.

But a bit earlier, there was an attack on LPP Holding in Pardubice. Contrary to appearances, they don’t sew jeans. They make weapons. And sell them to Israel. And that was the reason for the attack by a pro-Palestinian group.

In Germany last year, there were attacks on transformer stations by a group of eco-primitivists.

You can guess where I’m going with this?

Such an almost symbolic transport as chocolates shaped like Formula 1 cars is the best symbol of capitalism since “Work 219: Landscape X” by H.R. Giger in Jello Biafra’s interpretation.

And it would be nothing unusual for an attack on such a symbol to be motivated ideologically. And pro-health.

When punks promoting a healthy lifestyle, that is straight edge, were radicalizing, they reached the point where they fuck up people for drinking beer at concerts.

Which, of course, was stupidity, because alcoholism is a systemic problem and should be solved systemically, just like the problem of obesity. Not attacked fat people, but steal trucks with sweets. For example.

Does anyone have a better way to solve the junk food problem?

Unless you practice zen while kneading dough for 20 minutes. But, quoting a classic, for that you need a lot of phlegm in you — and “in me there’s nothing but fury.”

If you make dough, bread, angel wings (faworki), or anything that needs long kneading, a planetary mixer is something you need.

You can buy a cheap mixer for around 300 zł, and in Germany, even below €100, up to several times that price. I’m talking about home equipment.

At the low end, it will usually be a mixer with only the basic functions. At the high end, you’ll find machines with a dozen attachments — for example, slicing attachments (which, for me, are completely unnecessary because I use such discs in my cooking processor), touch screens, and apps.

These apps usually contain ready-made recipes.

The question is: will you actually use them, or do you already have your own recipes?

My cooking processor came with an entire cookbook. I used it once.

When choosing a machine — apart from the size of your wallet — it’s worth thinking about which functions you’ll actually use.

Planetary mixers can:
mix, stir, whip foam, chop, grind, mince meat, grate, slice, dice, cut fries, or squeeze juice.
Each function requires a special attachment.

And at home, you don’t really need such an all-purpose tool.

Because if I need to grate one carrot, it’s better to take a hand grater than install an attachment on the machine and then wash it.
You’ll wash a grater in 6.5 seconds.

Same thing if you want to cut a few slices for sandwiches for two people. If you’re cutting for twenty, then sure.

There’s no point in overpaying for something you won’t use. When choosing a mixer (or any device, not only for the kitchen), ask yourself two damn important questions:

1. How much can I afford to pay for it?
2. What do I actually need and what will I really use?

And I warn you against thinking that if you buy a planetary mixer — or any device — you’ll suddenly start baking cakes or whipping egg whites.

A tool only makes sense if it makes work easier than you would do anyway.

And the third question — which really applies to all kitchen equipment:

Where will it stand?
Both when you are using it and when you are not.

This is especially important in modern apartments, which seem to be built for people who live on pizza delivered by Uber. These are not kitchens — they’re a fucking tragedy.

In my case, the planetary mixer is used mainly for making bread.
Which means the only attachment I use is the dough hook.

Bread: 10 minutes of kneading.
Rolls: 13 minutes.

And during that time, instead of kneading by hand, I can do something else.

That’s an important criterion when choosing kitchen equipment.

Is it kitchen plug-and-play?
A device where I throw in the ingredients, switch it on, and forget about it — ideally with a timer that switches it off by itself.

Or is it something that requires constant attention, like when making hummus with a hand blender, which you have to hold the whole time — while with a processor you switch it on, forget about it, and do something else.

When choosing a mixer, pay attention to the size of the bowl.

For home use, smaller is usually better than bigger.

If the bowl is too large compared to the amount of dough you’re kneading, it won’t knead properly.

But when it comes to power, go for as much as possible — over 1000 W.

Herring, the basic fish of Hamburg and North German street food (Fischbrötchen, the classic fish-in-a-bun), is a people’s fish — staple food for fishermen and villagers along the Baltic and North Sea coasts for centuries.

In plant-based cooking, the essential way to achieve a fishy — or, as I call it, “oceanic” — flavor is to use seaweed.

The most basic and commonly used seaweed is nori — those square sheets used for sushi, available in almost every supermarket.
And importantly, they’re affordable.

And that’s perfectly enough.
If you’re hosting a vegan or vegetarian for Christmas Eve and you serve them a fishless dish seasoned with nori, they’ll be delighted.
Especially if it’s not that unfortunate celery-fish.

The oldest — and unfortunately still the most popular — method of making vegan fried “fishless fish” is the celery cutlet:
Boil a slice of celery. Cool it. Wrap in nori. Bread it. Fry it.

Don’t do this!

The nature of celery is to be… bland. It’s like a singer who sounds fine as a backup vocal, but as a frontman — absolutely not.
And boiling it (the celery, not the singer) does not help its case (although there are many singers I’d prefer boiled rather than singing… same with some vocalists).

Even if you boil it with seaweed, its texture doesn’t absorb flavor well. And its natural taste and structure have nothing to do with fish.

So what instead of celery?

But of course — soy cutlets. My favorite ingredient.
More precisely, cutlets made from TVP — textured vegetable protein.

I most often use rectangular soy steaks, which have a more interesting texture — more like land animal meat than fish, admittedly — but they work beautifully.

A crucial step is proper preparation: cooking and marinating them in the right broth.

Marinade

• 1.5 L water or good vegetable broth
• 2–3 tbsp soy sauce
• 2–3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (optional)
• 1 sheet of nori
• 5 g kombu
• 5 g wakame
• 5 g bladderwrack (fucus)
• 1 tbsp crema di balsamico
• Soy cutlets

Put all the ingredients into cold water or broth, bring to a boil over medium heat (CAUTION: it bubbles intensely), and leave it until the next day.

Nori is the basic seaweed, as mentioned. But if you can — and if your budget allows — it’s worth using a mix of different seaweeds.
Besides nori, I use bladderwrack and wakame. For some dishes, I add spirulina as well.

Be careful with spirulina — it gives a strong blueish color, depending on the variety.
I like this color — it evokes the sea again, and therefore those “oceanic” flavors.

Because of the chemical reactions that deepen and strengthen the flavor, the marinated TVP needs to sit for at least a full day. You can refrigerate it and keep it for 3–4 days before cooking.

And ideally, cook it one day before Christmas Eve so it develops even more flavor after frying.

Finishing the “Nofish”

Remove the cutlets from the marinade and gently squeeze them.
Gently — it should be juicy.

Heat the oil in a pan until very hot.
Linseed oil is great, or a linseed–rapeseed mix. Peanut oil also works beautifully with oceanic flavors.

Tear nori sheets along their folds to match the width of the cutlet.
Wrap the moist cutlet in nori.

Bread it however you like — you can check out my examples.
For instance, almond-crusted fishless cutlets are a nod to old Polish Christmas culinary tradition.

INGREDIENTS:

• 250 g dried adzuki beans
  (which gives about 500 g cooked beans, or the equivalent amount from a can)
• 200 g onion (2 pcs)
• 250 g smoked plums
• 150 g sun-dried tomatoes
• 30 g sun-dried tomato oil (3 tbsp)
• 400 ml cashew milk
• 1 tbsp marjoram
• 1 tsp ground juniper
• pepper
• cumin/caraway

PREPARATION:

Soak the beans for 8 hours. Drain the water, rinse the beans, cover with cold water, and cook with 1 teaspoon of baking soda until soft — still slightly al dente.
Dice the onions, slice the tomatoes into strips.
Heat the tomato oil in a pot and fry the onions until golden. Add the tomatoes, beans, and plums. Mix well, pour in the milk, and let it simmer on low heat for a few minutes.

VARIATIONS:

Both sun-dried tomatoes and smoked plums (or any smoked fruit) are sources of umami — that “meaty” taste. You can add dried mushrooms as well, which are also rich in umami.
You can also enrich this fasting-but-rich bean dish with almonds or nuts. This was also a Polish tradition — especially almonds, used during fasts as substitutes for dairy.
Instead of plant milk, you can use passata, vegetable juice, or a good broth.

NUTRITIONAL VALUE:

100 g of the dish contains 4.7 g of protein and 154 kcal.

NOTES:

Cooking beans with baking soda significantly shortens the cooking time, but also makes them boil over violently. So you need to watch them.

SERVING:

Serve with bread, on toast, or with potatoes. It can also be served cold.

Beans are a typical Polish peasant winter food, although they have only a four-century tradition in Poland, and — like potatoes and tomatoes — came to Europe from the Americas. Today, they are a major source of protein and calories for much of the global population.
The world’s largest producer of beans is… India. Interestingly, among all major bean-producing countries, India has the lowest yield per hectare, twice lower than Mexico, four times lower than China.

I know I’m being boring, and before Christmas, most people just want to be in a relaxed mood, but in a way, we’re in a situation that is not unusual at all — worrying whether there will be enough food for everyone.
The food security we’ve enjoyed in Europe for decades is an anomaly in human history. The last few hundred years have been a dazzling period of economic growth, rising prosperity for increasingly wide segments of society.
But this extraordinary success had a price. That price is the current ecological catastrophe, which is becoming an increasing threat to Europe’s food security as well.
And now we also have war — something that has been, and still is, an everyday reality for many people. And that also means smaller harvests.

In spring, they reported that Ukraine sowed one-third less arable land this year than last. Fertilizer prices next year will be more than twice as high as before the war… The future is more uncertain than ever in our lifetime.
But isn’t that truly our condition? Impermanence is one of the three fundamental characteristics of conditioned existence in samsara. Every pleasure and every suffering ends.

I am not — and in this lifetime never was — a Christian, so I’ve always had a specific relationship with the Winter Holidays.
Christmas always had the charm of its magical symbolism for me, but it is not far from the magic of the reborn Sun and all the solar deities representing the forces of nature. Today, these holidays are very close to me, because the God who is born at the Winter Solstice dies in spring, and his body becomes fertilizer for Mother Earth. He stands at the beginning of the road from field to table, and at the other end, I toil like other chefs to prepare masterful holidays.

I like to call myself a Buddhist heretic, although in this strange religion-not-a-religion, it’s hard to become a heretic, because on my “spiritual” (I hate that word) path I had experiences from Western traditions, Indigenous religions, shamanism, and magical traditions. And I experienced what in those traditions are called gods, demons, or angels.

And yes — I believe the Spirit of Christmas exists. And he severely punishes anyone who doesn’t like good food and good fun.

So, regardless of what holidays you celebrate, and regardless of how uncertain these times are — celebrate, enjoy, eat. And remember not only symbolically about the lonely, the hungry, and the sick. Because they are the essence of these holidays.**

If we look deeper into history — and also deeper into society — we see a culinary reality that is very different from what films from Hollywood or WFFiD present. And this issue isn’t just culinary; it touches the very foundations of historical policy.

For long decades, history was the history of the wealthiest families. Recently, I came across a book about the beginnings of German statehood… and it was my biggest reading disappointment of the year.
 The entire book was basically: “Duke A allied with Duke B against Duke C, who, with papal support, crowned himself and allied with King D, and together they attacked Duke E.”

Whenever I read that kind of thing, all I can think about is the townsfolk under siege, or peasants whose crops were trampled by armies… people who are almost completely absent from textbooks and films.

When I was in school, we learned about the Feast at Wierzynek. However, no one mentioned that this was when “orszada” (a very popular term in the interwar period) emerged in Poland, nor was there any mention of what townsfolk or peasants — comprising at least 90% of the population — ate and how they lived. And this was in the PRL, where theoretically folk history should have been emphasized.

The incomparable Professor Dumanowski is doing wonderful work reviving the oldest Polish recipes and cookbooks, but naturally, he is limited to the cuisine of the top 1%. The earliest written recipes come from magnate and royal courts.

So what was the cuisine of the poor — the 90%? Did Poland have its own cucina povera?

Yes and no.

There are no written sources at all about peasant or urban-poor cookery. Recipes were passed solely by word of mouth.
 What’s fascinating, especially in the context of Christmas Eve or other holidays, is that the “lady of the house” prepared dishes entirely from memory!
 I write down everything — quantities, ingredients, procedures — on paper or in my tablet, and they hold it all in their heads… damn. Respect to the women of the old households!

But many dishes have survived in family traditions and in early 20th-century collections of “economical cooking.” The oldest dishes, from the time of the first Piasts, were reconstructed by archaeologists, the Lis family.

This was an almost entirely plant-based cuisine. Peasants and the poor ate meat rarely. The widespread availability of meat and dairy is a phenomenon of the last 100 years.
 In Poland, it arrived with the era of workplace and school canteens in the PRL — with pork chops and meat patties. Similar developments happened throughout the “developed world.” In postwar Western Europe, during the “social-democratic compromise,” the living standards of the working class rose, and workers began eating meat, which was synonymous with prosperity.

But if we look at recipes from before that meat boom, we find dishes like cauliflower or potato cutlets, bean cutlets, or groch z kapustą (peas and cabbage).
This is likely what our peasant ancestors might have eaten on Christmas Eve.

Polish — or really any — cucina povera, folk peasant cuisine, may not have been fully plant-based, but it was dominated by plants. Today, we would call it flexitarian. Out of necessity.
 Everyday meals were vegetarian, plant-based, and meat appeared only occasionally, on holidays.

And even then, meat was often used in such a way that a small amount fed an entire family or village — for example, in dumplings. The most important miracle of St. Hyacinth (Św. Jacek) was feeding an entire village with a small piece of meat — hence he is associated with dumplings. I remember that from childhood.

Pierogi are an excellent example of a Polish plant-based, traditional, folk dish — served with flaxseed oil.
 Five hundred years ago, your ancestors and mine were probably scarfing down such pierogi from one shared bowl.

This is traditional Polish plant-based — and deeply Christmas-related — cuisine. In its festive, richer form.

Christmas Eve cuisine also includes dishes that were rarely made at other times, such as kutia.

Among the poor, there were no elaborate fish-based culinary illusions on the Christmas table — and often no fish at all.

Here is an important point: game and fish from wild waters were the property — like all land — of the king, who granted rights to the aristocracy. Catching fish or hunting, and sometimes even gathering herbs in the forest, could carry the death penalty for “stealing the lord’s property.”

There were, of course, exceptions — some villages had access to their own stream or woodland — and Kraków, as far as I recall, received a royal privilege for townsfolk to catch fish. But in general, peasants had extremely limited access to wild animal protein, even on Christmas Eve.

And with the stricter fasting rules in Poland than in Western Europe, not only meat but also dairy products were forbidden on Christmas Eve.

In practice, traditional Polish Christmas Eve Folk Cuisine was plant-based.

And as with all traditions, there’s no sense in locking ourselves inside what existed 200–300 years ago. We should create new interpretations using modern techniques and ingredients.
 Cuisine is not a museum — it is alive only when it changes with each dish, each chef, and each Christmas Eve.

Thus, a modern, 100% plant-based interpretation of Christmas Eve cuisine is, paradoxically, a return to the roots of this tradition.

A tradition with enormous untapped cultural potential. Polish Christmas Eve cuisine is a massive, unused Polish soft power.