Cicer cum caule

Here is the full translation:

Since Christmas is just around the corner, here is traditional Polish Christmas Eve cabbage.

INGREDIENTS:
250 g dried whole peas
500 g sauerkraut
40 g dried mushrooms
150 g dried apples (whole slices)
250 g smoked plums
150 g dried apples (sliced)
50 ml hemp oil

PREPARATION:
Soak the peas for about 8 hours and cook until tender.
Pour hot water over the mushrooms and set aside to cool.
Squeeze the sauerkraut and chop it fairly coarsely. Add the sauerkraut and whole mushrooms to the peas and simmer over low heat for an hour.
Add the fruits and oil and continue to simmer until the fruit is soft.

VARIATIONS:
If you don’t have smoked plums, you can use regular dried plums and smoked salt or smoked paprika.
You can use other dried or smoked fruits. Even raisins or figs (which appeared in old Polish cuisine, though on the tables of wealthy nobility and magnates) — but then the dish will no longer be Polish cucina povera.
Instead of hemp oil, you can use flaxseed oil (both are traditional Polish oils) or even rapeseed oil.

NOTES:
The quality of the sauerkraut is extremely important in this dish. In Warsaw (I don’t know if this is still the case), you could buy excellent sauerkraut at the Dołek Bazaar. And generally at outdoor markets — I used to buy mine at Banacha.

SERVING:
Serve on a plate or, more traditionally, in a bowl with bread or potatoes (though potatoes are a late addition to Polish cuisine). I will serve it to guests around New Year’s with roasted potato rounds. If I manage to buy fresh herbs on the Monday after Christmas, I’ll add fresh herbs to the potatoes.
It pairs very well with toasted bread — ideally wholemeal. Traditional flatbreads also work.

For some time now, inspired by Michał Pytlik and Mr. Makłowicz, I’ve been diving into the topic of cucina povera. And the more I read, the more the question grew in my mind: what is Polish cucina povera? And without a doubt, peas with cabbage is one of those dishes in Polish cuisine that was traditional food of the poor — mainly peasants.

It isn’t easy to reconstruct that cuisine. Almost no recipes of the poor were ever written down; the first Polish cookbooks showcased the cuisine of the top 1% (the magnates and the royal court). The first cookbooks with folk, “economical” recipes come from the early 20th century.
But knowing something about the ingredients of the traditional diet — and we know them from Slavic times, thanks in great part to the Lis family, a couple who run field workshops where early Polish folk dishes are prepared — and comparing them to dishes considered traditional today, it becomes fairly easy to identify which ones belonged to the cuisine of the poor.

These are plant-based dishes, simple and nourishing. Much closer to modern principles of healthy eating than pieprzna i szafranna moja mościa panna — the courtly cuisine. Heavy, fatty, with enormous amounts of meat, fat, sweets, and alcohol. That cuisine, by the way, contributed to the death of more than one monarch and magnate.

And yet this heavy cuisine is today presented under the label “peasant food.” Dishes with more meat than a peasant would eat in a month — especially since fasting days were so numerous. In those times, fasting was observed for about half the days of the year: not just Fridays and Lent, but also Wednesdays, Saturdays, and the eves of all major holidays.

It’s also worth clarifying a common misunderstanding about fasting and whether fish counts as meat. Traditional Polish fasting excluded not only meat but also animal products such as butter — yet allowed fish and even beavers and waterfowl. And there was nothing inconsistent about that.

Traditional fasting followed the principles of Hippocratic dietetics and his system of humors (which has similarities to Asian medical systems such as Ayurveda, Tibetan medicine, and Chinese medicine).
For Hippocrates, meat and dairy had a “hot” nature, stimulating sensual desires. Water and the creatures that live in it had a “cooling” nature, calming the passions — not only sexual desire but also anger.

But the fasting cuisine of the wealthy and the poor differed even more than Polish court cuisine differed from French or Italian court cuisines (from which the Polish one drew heavily at certain times).

So here we have peasant, fasting food: sauerkraut — cruciferous vegetables, very important for our microbiome; mushrooms adding umami; dried and smoked fruits deepening the flavor; peas providing protein and fiber...
Of course, those old recipes — even the peasant ones — need to be modified today for many reasons. For example, we work much less physically than peasants did, and we live in conditions of relative abundance rather than scarcity. So it’s better to use less oil than our ancestors did.

And since this is my last pre-holiday post, and during the holidays I’ll be doing prep — I’m actually starting right after finishing this text — and on the Monday after Christmas guests are arriving, I’m already sending you all my Christmas and New Year wishes:

May your life be full of flavor, and may there be one taste for all beings.