Cooking, recipes, technique.
“In water, fish screw,” as folk wisdom says — so in vegan or plant-based cooking, there’s no place for water. Because that wouldn’t be vegan. Seriously, though: cooking soups, sauces, etc., using juice, oat milk, or broth instead of plain water lifts them to a whole new level. I developed this broth over several years, starting in … Read more
A tough choice, shamefully skipped when people talk about cooking.And yet, at the intake end of the digestive tract, there’s a cook, and at the exit end—a toilet cleaner. And yes, when you go vegan, your poop radiates goodness and cosmic light. Although sometimes it also stinks so badly that birds fall out of the … Read more
And how do you tell a crank from a reliable dietitian? A dietitian will say: It depends. Because if you eat fries, wash them down with Coca-Cola or beer, or even (or especially) vodka,then yes — that is a vegan diet.A vegan diet is unhealthy as hell. And if you eat a Mediterranean diet, with meat, of … Read more
If there were a single image that could represent both Poles and Germans at once, it would be an image of potatoes. Which is actually a bit strange, because in both countries potatoes appeared on the table relatively recently — less than 200 years ago. They largely replaced groats, and, to some extent, bread as … Read more
Here is the full translation: Since Christmas is just around the corner, here is traditional Polish Christmas Eve cabbage. INGREDIENTS:250 g dried whole peas500 g sauerkraut40 g dried mushrooms150 g dried apples (whole slices)250 g smoked plums150 g dried apples (sliced)50 ml hemp oil PREPARATION:Soak the peas for about 8 hours and cook until … Read more
Fish used to be an important part of the diet during fasting. However, this did not come from biblical tradition, but from Hippocrates’ humoral medicine. A key element of fasting was overall restraint. Fasting was not only abstaining from certain foods, but also a spiritual fast — holding back impulses, cultivating a kind of emotional … Read more
For about fifteen hundred years, borscht has been one of the foundations of Polish and, more broadly, East Slavic cuisine. Originally made from fermented leaves of Heracleum sphondylium (which gave the dish its name), it later came to mean soups prepared on various types of sour starters — that is, fermented vegetables. Today the most … Read more
On the internet, you can find everything you’re capable of imagining—and plenty of things you’re absolutely not.One of them is “culinary Marxism.” The moment I saw the phrase, it stole my heart, and I’ve since enjoyed calling myself a “culinary Marxist.” Whatever that may actually mean. And I found a very intriguing interpretation of the … Read more
In the fasting season, people didn’t necessarily eat “fasting food” in today’s sense of the word — bland, meagre, diet-friendly.Fasting could be lavish. Of course, only on the tables of the small part of society that could afford it. The fish that replaced ham during fasts had, for centuries, been unavailable to the majority of … Read more
Once very popular in traditional folk cooking, today these ingredients are truly underappreciated and underused. Various grains, seeds, and nuts — from sunflower seeds to hemp (with their phenomenal protein content), pumpkin seeds, and walnuts. On the one hand, they no longer play the role they once did, when even a hundred years ago, nuts and seeds … Read more
