First step to being a good Polish housewife

I was invited to my first Polish christmas dinner on sunday past.

The perfect* boyfriend of a friend decided to throw us a traditional Polish christmas dinner to celebrate his new job.

It's a 12 course meal, steeped in traditional and ritual.

I showed up early, bringing a bottle of champagne and ice- and was told there was no drinking. "There's no drinking on Polish Christmas dinner" he says. What? Polish and no drinking? I was flabbergasted. Ok....nevermind. I offered to help with preparation- and he tells me to defrost the carp. It's a whole carp, like with the head and all, if im not wrong, flown/shipped/lorried from Poland. Ok....im still calm, but it he's starting to panic.

I switch into bossy, organized, housewife in kitchen mode (i admit, i do have this aspect of my personality i'd rather not explore) in the light of the panic. At least i rise to the occasion (so he said......;P)

I ended up chopping fish, running out for last minute supplies, frying various sorts of dumplings and keeping the boy sane. It all went well in the end.

The dinner started with the sharing of holy bread- it's the proper blessed stuff. It's a really sweet thing where you go around the table, taking a piece of each other's bread and wishing something for the person in the next year. It was kinda emotional, but really heartwarming.

Then (2) is boiled eggs with heart attack inducing, super-delicious polish mayonnaise. It symbolises purity and new year, so we had to finish the whole tray. Not a problem. I was licking the mayonnaise of my plate. Even the eggs were from Poland. Tesco eggs just wouldn't do.

(3) Beetroot soup (that looks like blood and stains lips a gorgeous red) with mushroom dumplings served with (4) croquets

(5) THE POLISH CARP. Defrosted, sliced (a fucking mission), battered and fried. Fried and served straightway; it was soft, fresh and delicious. I wish there was more. The bones were hell and there's bread on the table just in case someone gets bones stuck in their throat. Eaten with (6) mashed beetroot and horseradish and (7) marinaded, pickle slippery jack mushrooms.

No, unfortunately our carp wasn't that big :( The story is that the freshness of the carp is so important that in Poland people will keep the carp alive in the bathtub to kill and cook on the day of the dinner itself. So yeah, no baths before christmas.

(8) Pickled herring (my absolute favorite!) which my friend had trouble with. He cant stand the look of it. The thing it, it's said that the 12 courses are for the 12 months of the year, and so you have to eat a little bit of everything or not the course you miss will mean a bad month in the coming year. He had some in the end. He won't be buying it again, but it wasn't as bad as he imagined it was.



(9)Boiled-fried-dumpling (i cannot say anything in polish, but i swear that was what it translated to). Filled with cabbage and fungus (like the edible sort not the feet kind). By this point, i was kinda bursting. But dinner must go on......

(10)Lazy dumpling- cottage-cheese like cheese, with a thin pastry covering- fried in butter and covered in sugar that's allowed to caramelize. Heaven, because you'll have a heart attack eating that but you'll die happy. Perfect just off the pan, hot and melty......

(11)Sweet pasta salad, with poppy seed+honey+almond paste, walnuts and raisin. Yum, but i was seriously full up to the gills by this point.

(12) Desserts-

(a) Polish cherry cheesecake. Piquant cherry, that creamy cottage-cheese like cheese and chocolate sponge. At this open i was accessing the special dessert pouch my stomach has.


(b) Polish tree cake. I thought it was called tree cake because it looks like tree bark
but no, it's called tree cake because at the shop, where it's made it actually looks like a tree (a cone, and they stick branches at the top). Tree cake rocks. By this point, i could not move. Neither could anyone else. Hence......

WE ALL MISSED THE LAST TRAIN HOME.

And then was the adventure of bringing lotsa-lotsa yummy polish dinner food home (one of us had a box, i had 2 plastic bags full of tuppeware) on the bus. One to east london, 2 to heathrow, one more to south london and one lucky fella lived in central london. We didn't get any pictures of the meal because we were having to much fun cooking, eating and messing about. It was loads of fun and such a fantastic cultural experience (cliched but so true). And those fungus dumplings go so well with a lettuce salad for lunch today.

*My mate's boyfriend is perfect, except for the little thing about commintment phobia. Other than thats he's perfect. Im jealous. But what's a girl to do?