We Jews have a love/hate relationship with Poland... and vice versa... the Yiddish saying "You can take the Jew out of Poland, but you cannot take Poland out of the Jew" is true... Several of my uncles served in the Polish Army... 11 of my aunts/uncles were martyrs during the Khurbn... but I still feel a connexion to Poland, we speak Yiddish, we speak Kaschubian at home... Despite all, Kocham Polskę... moja krew pochodzi z Polski, jestem Żydem, który nie może opuścić Polski
We have much more common than we think... over 1000 years common history live, coulture, supersitions... but herring in Jewish style (śledź po żydowsku to już nasz wynalazek) :D P.S.Every Friday my grandfather brought challah from work, I liked Fridays very much.
For me, as a Pole, it's not that surprising. For many centuries before WW2 Jews were significant minority in Poland (including parts that are now Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine). Try dish called "Karp po żydowsku". If you're lucky, you can even find Kosher Śliwowica, which is considered by many to be the best kind ;) Enjoy you stay in Poland and SMACZNEGO :)
To też nie do końca. Nazwa "karp po żydowsku" wzięła się stąd, że żydzi w Polsce pochodzili głównie ze wschodu z terenów Rosji - tam powstała sekta hasydów, byli to potomkowie różnych mieszanek etnicznych głównie słowiańsko-turecko-tararskich, po rozpadzie Imperium osmańskiego a wcześniej Kaganatu, rozeszli się po Europie. Była to głównie ludność biedna, pod wpływem mistycyzmu wschodniego, przypominali trochę dzisiejsze skupiska cygańskie np na Słowacji. Nie asymilowali się, kultywując swój język, wiarę. W ich diecie było sporo taniej i biednej żywności- jak czosnek i cebula. Stąd "karp" po żydowsku, to był po prostu karp w cebuli. W średniowiecznej Polsce karpia podawano bardziej na bogato, a Żydzi jedli dość skromnie. Inne dania polskiej kuchni, które noszą przymiotnik danego kraju lub etnosu, miały często charakter geograficzny lub ekonomiczny - jak np pierogi ruskie (Ruś czerwona- tereny rusińskie) albo placki po węgiersku (kontakty handlowe z Węgrami i import papryki z tego kraju)
Hi Michael, really enjoying your vids and perspective on Poland. Fun fact, the potato is actually native to the Americas and arrived in Europe post-Columbus, so most likely both Jews and Poles started eating potato pancakes at the same time, since we were already living together for quite some time at that point. I’m fascinated with Jewish history in Poland. In case you haven’t been yet, I highly recommend the Polin museum in Warsaw that details the entire history of Polish Jews.
Yes, I agree the Eastern European Jews have different cuisine than those living in the Middle East or Sephardic Jews. They adopted many local foods but also modified them and got inspired by them since many were tavern keepers at the beginning. Like begals from obwarzanek etc. Begal was brought to NYC and the rest is history. From Krakow to NYC.)
Kogiel Mogiel, !!! It is Jewish dish, sweet, made of sugar and raw egg yolks. I love it! I'm polish and grew up in communist Poland and since we didn't have to too many sweets in the stores, kogiel mogiel was a very good, popular dessert
Hey Michael! When I visited Israel, I was so surprised to see Halva and Babka, and that people also eat sour pickles. I've never seen this food anywhere outside of Poland. Then I realized that there was a lot of migration from Eastern Europe to Israel and people brought their favorite foods with them. And also that Jewish food stayed in Poland. I'm sure there are even more examples out there. I think it would be cool if the Jewish and Polish people were more aware of their shared bits of culinary culture. At the beginning I was confused about who invented what, but I don't think it's that important. It makes me happy when I go out into the world, where most people have never heard of our dishes, and then I meet a Jew who knows some of them, and likes them too :)
Romanians do a lot of sour pickles out of many vegetables. We also have halva, it is Turkish. We have cabanos sausages and all sort of other sausages. Food circulates fast.
@@wertyks508Because there used to be no Polish stores in California. Jews brought dishes from Poland, Russia and other European countries. Did Jews before the diaspora know pickled foods? They did not recognize it until they arrived in Central and Eastern Europe. We have frosty winters and people had to find a way to store food and provide vitamin C and microelements. Pickled foods contain a lot of these ingredients.
as a Polish American (born in Lithuania, actually) my observation is that the foods you mentioned are pretty much common not only in Jewish or Polish cuisine, but also in Lithuanian as well..Pretty much everything you mentioned, was a staple food when I was growing up. matza was probably only exception. I knew about it, but tried it only once or twice. Potato pancakes (aka.bulviniai blynai in Lithuanian) was super popular. I had no idea that they are called "latkes" until I migrated to US. we called Chalka as Chala, maybe that is a regional name variety). And yes, it was sold in regular grocery stores.
Many of those things, are also popular in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia as well;) Placki ziemniaczne/latkes are called "deruny", chala is called chala, and they also eats a lot of "śledź" which is herring, and call it the same as Poles. We also eats krupnik, knish, borsch, and fish meatballs similar to gefilte fish.
Great episode! I remember doing a Polish food tour once for a group from Israel and with each stop they said: "OK, OK, all this is fine and tasty, but it's the same stuff we ate as children (or still do). Show us some Polish food!" I guess living by one another for almost a millenium has created a lot of unspoken bonds and traditions that are actually common. I believe food is a good connector here, especially in context of the troubled history that the Jews and Poles share. Also: bagel comes originally from Krakow (first ever mentioned in historical records in the year 1610 in the Kazimierz Jewish commmunity: it was, in fact one of the first communal social help systems to mothers giving birth: a basket full of bagels was a gift for such, as stated by the Kahal of Kazimierz in that particular year). We can guess that bagels might be a Jewish comepetitor to Christian obwarzanek, that you have here at least since the 14th century. Also latkes: one theory gives the name a Slavic origin from the word "łatka" meaning a patch, like on trousers. And a potato pancake kinda looks like one. Cheers and keep on going, Michael!
Wait till you come at 'placek po węgiersku / góralsku / beskidzku' 😉 Kinda the plate sized latka, folded over with some kind of goulash in it 😁 The 'hungarian' variety is so popular that Polish tourists in Hungary were asking so much for it that they actually started to make them there 😁 (it's not in any way actually Hungarian, we just named it as such 😁)
Lots of words in Polish comes from either Yiddish language such as: hucpa, cymes, bachor, bajgiel, belfer, ciuch, rejwach, szmonces, ślamazara, plajta. The spelling probably differs but, pronounciation should be similar.
To są słowa żydowskie i używane wyłącznie w stylizacji wypowiedzi. Do lat 70tych funkcjonowała w Polsce przestępcza subkultura gitowców, git ludzi - getes - w której obowiązywała przestępczą gwara - grypsera - wywodząca się z jidisz. Przeglądałem kiedyś pitawal Kraju Nadwiślańskiego /zabór ruski/ z 1905roku. Zawierał on statystyki przestępstw z podziałem na nacje - żydzi w zależności od kategorii przestępstwa stanowili od 70 % do 99% osadzonych w więzieniach stąd pochodzenie grypsery jest jasne.
My Polish grandmother added the chicken heart and liver and whatever else the butcher threw in with the chicken into the soup and called all that the pipek. Her next-door neighbor and best friend in her apartment in the Bronx was Jewish. I remember them speaking Polish together, of course, but also another language and years later, I realized it must have been Yiddish. Somehow, my Polish grandmother, knew some Yiddish ❤ .
Hi! I'm from Poland. About the "Latkas" - my grandma called them "Łatki" - so here it is! Sound similar :D thank you for bringing back this memory about Łatki :)
I'm surprised you didn't mention Pączki. They are similar to Sufganiyot, and in Yiddish they are called Ponchik, which is pronounced similar to Pączek, the singular form of Pączki. Like Sufganiyot, Pączki are associated with a religious tradition, in the case of the latter, a way to use up rich ingredients before the start of Lenten fasting. Honey cake is another food with significance to each culture
Also, Berliner (imagine that) has a striking resemblance to what you mentioned. We clearly all lived together sharing traditions, gastronomic practices and experiences from to time to time. There is a rich history there that can be learned from so that atrocities can be eliminated.
The advent of potatoes came much later than the Jewish settlement in Poland. So it's safe to say the whole Poland-Lithuania got latkes at the same time. The Polish cuisine includes: Pascha for Easter, carp po żydowsku for Christmas, and cymes means something good so you'll find it as a brand of juice or baked goods. Both nations I think treat chiken soup (rosół) as a healing potion.
Clearly… potatoes came from South America to Europe with conquistadors in 16th century. How was this eight day festival and symbolism of oil from 2000 years ago celebrated before the arrival of potatoes?
Also, don’t forget about Gefilte Fish! My mom made it all the time and we were not Jewish but Polish Americans (parents from Poland) So good! Still remember it! (35 years ago) Ryba faszerowana was the name she called it!
I think obwarzanek is some kind of street food variation of bagel. Too bad he didn't mention this one since it's popular in the whole world and was invented in Kraków
Hi, welcome to Poland! I'm happy to hear you enjoyed our food :) chałka indeed is delicious and we often eat it with jam. Placki ziemniaczane are more than yummy.
Polish cuisine is a heritage of many cultures. We inherited a lot from our regretfuly gone Jewish community and so Polish Jews now living elsewhere brought some of Polish cuisine with them. I think placki ziemniaczane are Polish as well as Kraków's obwarzanki now known everywhere as bagels that Jews brought to NY.
Gęsie pipki is goose stomachs in curry sauce with lots of onions. Full on delicious, I seriously recommend you tried it. Than you did not mention cebularz - a bread bun with onions and popeey seeds which to everyone coming from Lublin like myself is a taste of childhood. It is believed to originate from Jewish bakeries. A city, worth mentioning, whose third of the population was once Jewish. All the best in your daily life here.
I am not from a Jewish family, but my grandmother had Jewish neighbors in Radom. She loved eating maca or sucharki (rusks) with a cup of hot tea or cereal coffee for second breakfast or dessert. She said that it was easily digestible, good for health, and made the stomach rest after heavy, fatty dishes based on meat, lard, onion and sauerkraut, which are abundant in Polish cuisine. As for potato pancakes, I think they appeared at a similar time in many places, as soon as the potato appeared in Europe. That was a huge potato trend :) So probably the first people to make potato pancakes were the indigenous people of South America. Poles and Jews have a lot of common history, very visible in cuisine. It's so sad that our relations are so tense, and at the moment Jewish culture and customs are known in Poland only from American films, and not from the stories of elders, school lessons or the media.
Tyle stuleci żyliśmy razem. Było różnie ale myślę, że te wspólne lata przyczyniły się do wzbogacenia obu kultur. Przez wojnę straciliśmy coś cennego. Ja osobiście uważam, że Was tutaj brakuje. Wasza obecność nas ubogacała. Pokój z Tobą.
ich obecność ich ubogaciła, bardzo ale nie spłacili nigdy Długów Kahalnych a potem każdemu zaborcy budowali bramy powitalne i wysługiwali się im, przeciwko Polakom. Nawet francuzi Napoleona pisali o nich, że robią jako szpiedzy dla rosjan! Tak, bardzo wzbogacili się - wykupywali potem od carskich zaborców polskie ziemie po powstaniach w XIX w. Bardzo się niewdzięczni wzbogacili, łupiąc finansowo Polaków.
@@tomaszser470 tak jakby polska szlachta nie kolaborowała z zaborcami. Dzięki komu powstania nie wyszły i rozpadła się IRP - Żydom, czy polskim panom szlachcicom? A Żydzi w Polsce bywali też bardzo biedni.
@@adapienkowska2605żydzi splajtowali Rzeczypospolitą,potem wysysali majątki Polaków od carskich zaborców. Budowali zaborcom bramy powitalne -ostatnio w 1939 dla sowietów i niemców . Za chwilę żydzi splajtują taki kraj jak USA - zobaczysz, zapamiętaj panno ado pieńkowska (piszę z małej - jak sama o sobie napisałaś, szanuję twoją pisownię)
Honestly ? As a Pole who grew up next door to Aushwitz I have nothing but love for the Jewish people . It honestly makes m saw that some Jews show some hostility towards us.
@@tomaszser470 Zimą 1846 roku galicyjscy chłopi zachęceni przez austriackie władze pokazali jak bardzo czują się Polakami po stuleciach upodlenia i wmawiania im że są innym gatunkiem człowieka. Spadały głowy ciarachów i plebanków. Żydów zostawili w spokoju. Co do bogactwa Żydów (tych nielicznych bogatych nie-relatywnie w porównaniu z nędzą polskiej prowincji, także żydowskiej) - może szlachta powinna zabrać się do ciężkiej pracy zamiast liczyć na przywileje i toczyc bezsensowne powstania w przygotowaniach do których kompletnie zapomniała o tym, że bez chłopów i mieszczan będzie dla zaborców zwierzyną łowną? Pamiętaj, że Żydzi słuzyli szlachcie wypełniając niszę jaką stworzyło brak zamożnego mieszczaństwa i wrodzone ale też usankcjonowana prawem obrzydzenie szlachciurków dla parania się handlem. Oni byli od lepszych rzeczy, zwłaszcza pod koniec I Rzeczpospolitej - żerowania na pracy poddanych, praktykowania dewotyzmu przy jednoczesnej pogardzie dla niżej urodzonych bliźnich i przepijaniu resztek majątku. Żydzi mieli tylko takie przywileje i taką rolę odgrywali w klasowym spoleczeństwie jaką zdecydował się im powierzyć naród polityczny jakim była szlachta. Tam gdzie istniały prężne gminy żydowskie ozywiał się handel i rosły zyski właścicieli majatkow kluczy i miast. Byli - dzięki swym kontakto z innymi gminami z europejskiej i bliskowschodniej diaspory pasem trasmisyjnym dla przepływu dóbr i kapitrału. Nie bez powodu w czasie powstania Chmielnickiego wojska Rzeczpospolitej dbłay o ewakuację ludności żydowskiej z terenów obiętym powstaniem. Tyle na temat patriotycznej szlachty i Żydów, oczywiście w duzym uproszczeniu.
In Poland “placek po cygańsku”(Roma’s style pancake) is potato pancakes with gulasch. So we have to add Roma people into mix 😂 Welcome in Central-East Europe.
There is no need to add Roma here. This is a dish straight from communism. It has various names; Romani style pancake, Hungarian style pancake, robber pancake.😂😂😂🤣
Letki seems to be derived from polish "placki" which means pancakes generally. Personally this is my favourite food - the ones on the picture was more german style - city of Poznan has own dialect which calls potatoes "pyry" in plurar - pyry are grated on big holes and result in more "german" occupier version in contrary to rest of Poland where potatoes are completely milled/grated, starch is removed and then fried which makes them fluffier. What I found personally interesting is the fact that another of my favourite food - cymes / tzimmes - is jewish food but it has cultural difference - jewish base it on carrots and make it sweet with fruits while poles and lithuanians make it savoury with smoked pork or beef based on potatoes; It was extremely popular in Vilnus, Kowno and Lida before world wars in both versions.
I remember eating chalka all the time in Poland in the 90s, it was a better tasting, sweater bread that was halfway between white bread and a Polish doughnut. It wasn’t meant for sandwiches, but it was perfect with cottage cheese or spreadable cheese and any kind of jam or honey, then you wash it down with milk, it was perfect for that. Only thing I can compare it to now is Hawaiian bread, cuz it’s a little sweet, but chalka tasted better and looked absolutely amazing!! Gęsi pipek, never heard of it, but lit sound more like “duck neck” than anything else. Also, did you know that bagels were first made in Kraków by Jews, it’s the earliest record of bagels, if you ask me, it’s just a smaller version of chalka.
So glad I found your channel. I'm an Irish writer living in Poland and am fascinated by the history of Polish-Jewish culture. I found it poignant when I moved here to discover that bagels are not so common anymore (at least in my part of the country), despite their origins being in Jewish Poland. Highly recommend Eva Hoffman's book Shtetl if you haven't read it already. Wish I had discovered FestivALT before 2024 submissions closed, but I'll be sure to attend the events! -- Matthew
I grew up in Warsaw. My grandmother loved maca, and we always had it at home. She did tell me it was Jewish food, so it was like something Jewish that my grandma liked since her childhood. A kind of comfort food for her. She grew up as a peasant kid in the Mazovia region. Potatoes came to Poland by the end of the 17th century, so it probably entered the Polish and Jewish cuisine at the same time. It's a kind of food for the poor. Peasants didn't get to eat meat every day. Similarly, during the Communism era we used to have meat 1-2 a week, so potato pancakes were usually at least once a week for dinner. One of the most ironic Polish-Jewish food is karp po żydowsku (carp the Jewish way) which is one of our must have dishes for Christmas Eve (sic!) that I hear is called carp the Polish way in Israel. There are also various kinds of everything kosher, like kosher vodka.
And in my home the “karp po zydosku” was called “karp po grecku” (greek style). I have talked to Greeks and they do not have this dish in their cuisine 😂
"O ile w Krakowie czy szerzej w Galicji gęsi pipek to gęsie żołądki duszone w cebuli, o tyle na terenie byłego zaboru rosyjskiego w ten sposób określa się szyjki z gęsi nadziewane wątróbkami". 😁
To co było pokazane, to bardziej mi się z pasztetem skojarzyło. Natomiast właśnie żołądków w cebuli bym pojadl. Takie ciężko strawberry i gazujące od środka danie, ale tak pyszne, że nie wiem. Narobiłeś mi smaka 😅😅
Loved hallah as a kid in the 70s with some butter on it. It was like a dessert. Or just plain, ripping piece by piece. Memories. I miss it in Canada. They might have it in Polish stores here. Hmm, gotta check.
I became familiar with some Jewish food and customs while living in London and had the same thoughts upon moving to Poland. There does seem to be a lot of crossover. One you may have forgot is ćwikła z chrzanem, the kind of pink horseradish with beetroot you find on a Passover seder. In Poland you'll find this at the Easter table which has it's own collection of symbolic items. Since the product looks to be very similar, and it's eaten around the same type of year I wonder if there's a connection there.
Funnily when I was growing up in the ninetees in Poland, my mom used to buy me what was called a 'jewish salad' in the grocery store which I really liked. I also loved pastrami, which was available in every meat store back then. Years later I bought in London a sandwich that was called a "New York sandwich" which was filled with pastrami and 'jewish salad'. I was kind of surprised at first but then it all made sense.
Actually there are two different dishes called gesie pipki. First is a stew from goose stomachs and the second one (from your video) are stuffed goose necks. And pipka in Polish is not a dick. It is a pussy and its not a rude word. It is more how would you talk to the children.
Hello, I' Polish and I remember my grandma who prepared "podpłomyki" every Friday. Many years later I realized that podpłomyki are nothing more than matza😊
Ja byłem mały, babcia robiła coś w rodzaju macy z reszty ciasta na kluski, kładła kawałek rozwałkowanego ciasta na rozgrzanych fajerkach i po chwili było gotowe. Mam wrażenie, że teraz się mniej je placków ziemniaczanych jak kiedyś, generalnie chyba cała dieta się bardzo zmieniła od lat 80.
nie no, placków ziemniaczanych to się je na potęgę, są dostępne na każdym stoisku garmażeryjnym i można je nawet kupić w żabce. chociaż ja wolę robić swoje, chrupiące, doprawione cebulką :)
Moja babcia też robiła dokładnie w ten sam sposób placki! ..i pamietam, że jako maluchy uwielbialiśmy je wraz z kuzynostwem. Najlepsze beztroskie chwile 😊Pozdrawiam serdecznie!
I am Polish from Jewish origin, but my family lost traditions. Maca is popular for college students, often ate with śledź on top, but I prefer with hummus. Also my family eats potato pancakes with yogurt, or I prefer with ketchup. My family has the same Maca recepie from generations.
@lukaszchojnowski659 I don't like them, neither with sugar, or sour cream. Just solo with salt or sometimes with meat goulash (Hungarian) are the best for me.
If I remember correctly, Poland was save heaven in medical times for Jews. Some say they had 3/4 of all Jews, some say 4/5, but still they had a lot of them. Many of important Poland literature has Jews like Lalka, Wesele czy Znachor. Cultures also mix. We can see it in the city of Łódź for example. City of 4 cultures. Polish, Jewish, German and Russian. In the world there are also similar dishes, some inspired by others, some done a little differently. It’s card to say sometimes what food if from what culture as some dishes can be seen as part of one culture, but in reality are also part of other culture.
It's pretty simple to decide "Jewish or Polish". You can change the question to "Jewish or local '' because Jewish people used to live in different regions during diaspora, so if the kitchen was basically Jewish, then it would be similar for Sephardic and Ashkenazy Jews but it isn't. Jewish people were always adopting local cuisine to their kosher rules, changing names of the dishes but following local recipes due to the availability of ingredients and exchange of recipes. However, "original" Jewish cuisine (whatever it was those times) probably influenced somehow the cuisine of the countries where Jews lived, and that's all.
Gesie Pipki is basically goose neck stuffed with potato, onion and sometimes meat to form a kind of sausauge. Its a variation on a theme that produced such food as kaszanka or krupniok and also the kishke that is often found in kosher delis and markets in North America. Since sausage in Poland is usually made in a pig intestine, the jews were forced to get a bit creative in finding casings for sausage type products and the skin from a long goose neck fit the bill. Goose was a quite popular food among both gentiles and the ashkenazi jews of eastern europe as it is delicious, quite large, could be kosher and unlike chickens that at the time tended to be on the scrawny side also produced quite a lot of fat that after rendering then had multiple uses as schmaltz.
It would be nice to also discuss the origins of babka in comparison to chałka/challah. I was surprised to discover that babka, a typically Slavic food, is considered Jewish in NYC. Chałka/challah is undoubtedly Jewish. I concede that some variation of Slavic babka may have been adopted into Jewish cuisine, but it originated in Poland or other Slavic countries.
Note that many foods that Sephardic Jews eat are different. So what is Jewish food depends on environment and the native culture in which Jews were immersed. So many foods of Ashkenazi Jews is not food that Jews brought from MIddle East but what was developed and borrowed in Central and Eastern Europe from Germanic and Slavic cultures. Most likely dough for challah was developed in Northern France and Germany. It is really a brioche dough. BTW challah is great for French toast.
But it was Poland, rather than France, that was the main producer and exporter of grain in the Middle Ages. And Jews were ones of the major traders in grain. I did eat brioche in France, and though I loved it, it didn't taste the same as our chałka.
@@sylwiatime Brioche has egg, sugar and butter while challah has oil instead of butter to make it kosher, i.e., that you can eat challah with meat. And grain exports have nothing to do with it.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This dilemma in the case of dishes that we eat in Polish is simple. We have been living together there for more than 1500 years, Jews were forbidden to work on the land and serve in the army, so they could not prepare their own dishes because they did not sow anything and did not harvest anything. They could only eat what Polish farmers had harvested for them and probably showed what could be done with it.
In Radoszyce there's a regional delicacy called "kugiel". There's even a kugiel competition. I was suprised when I watched Netflix "Shtisel", where they'd eat kugiel (I was positive about it being Polish food).
Maca is pretty popular among health freaks and/or travelers. Given modern diet and stressful lifestyle maca can help with digestion. It doesn't get expired fast so it's good when travelling And it doesn't taste that bad. Especially if you have access to tasty toppings
You can get Challa in Austria, too. We call it Striezel, it's made of a slightly sweet very fluffy wheat dough with yeast. Among Gentiles, it was a traditional dish for All Saints Day when wintertime really sets in. Also, latkes are a common dish in many German regions, called Kartoffelpuffer in German. They were a traditional food for Lent and they are served with apple sauce.
Jewish culture and Polish culture have intertwined for 1,000 years. I recommend the Polin museum in Warsaw. You will find traces of this interaction in the cuisines of both nations. Let's start with bagels, which were started baking by Krakow's Jews in the 17th century. It was bread given to a woman after a successful childbirth . Do not confuse them with obwarzanek krakowski, which has been baked since the 14th century. These are two different types of baked goods from Krakow. Bagels came to the USA with 19th century emigration. Etymology of the word 'pipek' 1. «something hanging or sticking out of something» 2. contemptuously 'about someone helpless, clumsy' Gęsi pipek is known in two versions: stuffed goose necks and stuffed goose stomachs. The necks are stuffed with a stuffing of grated potatoes with onion, and less often with meat (e.g. kosher beef). The stomachs are stewed in oil or goose lard with onion and garlic. Potato pancakes(placki ziemniaczane), potato cake(babka ziemniaczana) and potato kiszka(kiszka ziemniaczana) are dishes of poor peasants from the areas of former eastern Poland. It's hard to find ancient roots in potato pancakes. Potatoes became popular only in the 19th century. Remember that many poor Jews lived in eastern Poland. In the canon of Polish cuisine you will find: Jewish-style herring, Jewish-style carp in jelly, and Jewish-style stuffed carp. These are very popular dishes. You will often find them on the Christmas Eve table in Poland. It's a paradox. Sometimes you'll come across a restaurant in Czulent. Cholent, ciulent (Yid. טשאָלנט, cholnt) is a traditional meat and vegetable goulash dish of Jewish cuisine, such as ragoût, eaten on Shabbat. I could list such dishes for a long time.
Placki ziemniaczane aka potato cakes love it. This is an amazing example of culture mixing among people who lived together for centuries. Plus show me a Pole who has never uttered the words "oi wei"... Speaking bout "oi wei" I was waiting for a plane from Munich to arrive at LAX. When they announced the delayed arrival I uttered "oi wei" what I heard from the back was "oi wei right we are going to be late for Bar mitzvah"
I am a Pole and all these are a surprise to me besides maca (where there is a vague link to Jewish culture for me). The rest of them feels so Polish that I never would have thought they could be Jewish 😊
@@lerubenfeld on the other hand my parents told me that we stole eating carp fish from Jewish culture but you never mentioned it so I guess it is not true? I hate carp btw and only consider eating it on Christmas where it is the main thing to eat, most Poles have similar opinion so you could say Carp is our Maca for Christmas. Apart from the fact that there is no biblical reason to eat carp on Christmas but here it is, every Christmas, on most Polish tables 🤣
@@wsiur I'm not sure if eating carp in general was that influence, as long as Poland used to be much more inland then is today so tradition of eating fresh water fish is much more rooted in our cuisine than sea fish. But there is a dish called karp po żydowsku which is one way to prepare it. Another dish that comes to my mind is sałatka po żydowsku, which is essentially patatoes & onions with dip of mayo and cream salt and lots of pepper - as simply as it sounds, I love it. The rich version is with herring pieces.
@@lerubenfeld part two? Yes, yes, yes!! My suggestions: Pascha (Pessah" - a dessert made of curd cheese, egg yolks , honey and raisins- it's often served here for Easter and it's of Jewish origin. Cymes- dessert made of potatoes and dried plums, carrots, raisins boiled with sugar cynamon, not as popular as "pascha" but still known. The word "cymes" in Polish means something very unique and very good. I make both these dishes sometimes around Easter .
This is not surprising. Slavs and Ashkenazi Jews lived together for hundreds of years and thus cultures and people mixed. Many times when I see friends who visit kosher shops in the states I see dishes that could easily be bought in a shop near my home. And does it matter who invented a particular dish? Not very much, in my opinion. What matters is that both cultures eat it and, most importantly, it tastes good to them :)
The best fermented pickles (not vinegar) i've ever tasted were pickles bought in some kosher store in toronto. It tasted almost like the ones made by my babcia, you can't get pickles like this even in polish stores.
w sklepie nie możesz dostać dobrych ogórków kiszonych z prostej przyczyny, proces fermentacji musi zostać zatrzymany aby móc to sprzedawać. Ogórki takie są z dodatkiem octu (niewielkim) albo podległy pasteryzacji, więc nie są już takie smaczne.
@@magorzatabanasiak5787 Nieprawda. W wielu sklepach sprzedają ogórki kiszone BEZ octu. Najlepsze są żydowskie Ba-Tampta. Fermentują ciągle jak potrzymasz dłużej to zmieniają kolor i robią się bardziej miękkie. To samo z kimchi. Cały czas fermentuje, że nawet są bąbelki CO2 jak otwierasz słoik.
Now I wonder if Latke can in any way mean łatka (i.e. patch, like you would sew on an elbow or something) they can kinda look like one if you sqyint hard enough 😁
My theory is that patatoes arrived Poland when there was already big jewish community established here. So placki ziemniaczane became then common dish for Poles and Jews right from beginning.
Traditions are not as old as we are being told. Poles and Jews did not begin to eat potatoes until late 18 century so certainly potato pancakes came even later. However pancakes could have been made form parsnips or Jerusalem artichokes (also from America) that preceded in popularity potatoes in Europe but later became kind of forgotten.
You are more than welcome... anytime Brother 🙂 You seem to be very polite and nice person.. about pancakes we adopted potato pancakes when it was bad.. as my grandmother remembers ;)
Nothing beats onion bun in Lublin area... When I was teenager every Saturday moning. on the the way back from student disco club in Lublin we always stoped to.local bakery to get hot onion buns.. .. I also had a chance to go.to.Jewish bakery in Toronto to try to get onion buns but they do not make the same like in Poland but still very delicious.. All the best
In the US, BJ's Wholesale sells some Polish and Jewish food. I buy from them Challah bread, I also bought gefilte fish, Polish ham and pickled mushrooms.
Yeah, but American diaspora still live in more less the same cultural circle as Europeans. I think those similarities are even more striking when particularly Israelis visit Poland or vice versa, as Israel in Poles' common opinion is viewed as exotic/faraway country (and I guess they view us in more less the same way). Funfact #1: in every polish house you can find a bin under a sink in the kitchen. You visit your friends' home or sth, need to throw away some trash - just find a kitchen and open the cupboard under a sink - congrats, you just found a bin. What was surprising for me - this rule works just as fine for literally every home I visited when I was in Israel :D Funfact #2: Lovely Israeli couple once tried to explain Israeli politics to me. They said sth like "you know, we have Hebrew word for it, it's just a "balagan"" (or "burdel", don't remember exactly), to which I just burst out laughing, as this word comes directly from Polish and pretty much desribes polish politics just as well :D
In Polish tradition there are also some foods and drinks that are made only once a year. I really like a compote made of dried fruits that we drink on Christmas but it's hard to get them in other parts of the year. The little ear-shaped dumplings are also popular with borscht or mushroom soup on Christmas but nobody makes them on a daily basis. And of course we borrowed gefilte carp from Polish Jews and eat it on Christmas Eve (but it has too many fishbones for me).
One food that I know comes from Jewish cuisine is cebularz, so pancakes with diced onions. Those can be easily bought in Warsaw, but for the good stuff you have to come to Lublin, as it is a bit of regional dish. Another one is carp, which after the war has become a traditional Christmas eve food in Poland and, from what I've read is based on pre-war Jewish dish. One of the more popular ways to serve it is even called "karp po żydowsku" so "carp in Jewish style".
In the Lublin area an onion cake called "cebularz" is very popular. The Jews of Lublin were first to make it in the XIX century. When I was a kid growing up in Lublin, I thought cebularz was avaiilable throughout the country but, apparently, that is not the case.
Cebularz is called Bialy in the US. According to the Wikipedia, Bialy, originally from the city of Białystok in Poland, is a traditional bread roll in Polish Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine. Before WW2 Bialystok was about 50% Jewish.
in Voivodeship Lubelskie you can find "cebularz" which is somethin like pizza, but dough it's more for like a bun not pizza topped with onion and poppyseed. Adding butter and you can eat that all day long. If you are to go anywhere in Poland, that's should be on your bucket list :) :) Cheers !
4:00 Put butter on it and it's cool. Or better: cream cheese,salmon and chives. I do like it. 6:05 Chanuka is much older then potatoes get known for non-native American, so it's seems having its origin in Poland or Italy. What about polish carp "karp po żydowsku"? What about "miodownik" (honey cake)?
Well Michael the question is who first make pancakes from potatoes: In 1536, Spanish Conquistadors in Peru discovered the flavors of the potato and transported them to Europe. At first, the vegetable was not widely accepted. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced potatoes to Ireland in 1589, but it took nearly four decades for the potato to spread to the rest of Europe.
Europeans did not like potato at first. In France they tried to make into cream soup …it did not take. Finally, someone discovered that they taste best roasted or fried with salt.
This is sooo hilarious!!!😂 I just had a conversation with my Jewish neighbor about her "privatizing" all of our bread as Jewish. Challah is ubiquitous in Ukraine. We call it 'kalach'.
Have you tried flavored maca? Onion maca, pepper maca, garlic maca :D Go for it! I also always treated it as light food, like when you have stomach problems or you are on some restrictive diet for health reasons.
I always thought that Polish food was very good. After coming to America in 1981 and going several times to French restaurants-back then we didn't have any of them in Poland-you can't imagine my surprise when I realized that the Polish food I grew up on and liked so much was actually French.
Nicolas Stohrer was a Polish pastry chef, completed his apprenticeship in the kitchens of Stanislav Leszczyński, king of Poland. Stohrer became a pastry chef for Marie Leszczyńska, daughter of Stanislav, and followed her in 1725 to Versailles after her marriage to King of France Louis XV. In 1730, when his employment contact with Maria Leszczynska ended, he opened the very first pastry shop in Paris that is operating to this day.
I wouldn't go with latkas or potato pancakes (placki ziemniaczane) that far. I mean if you look at it, it must have been a food source for the poor just like Belgian (French) fries. Those potato pancakes are also popular in Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine or Belarus. In Poland we have a dish called "Placki po węgiersku" tr. "Hungarian pancakes", which generally are potato pancakes with goulash :) That's why I used to think potato pancakes are a Hungarian thing ;)
Poles and Jews lived together for more than 500 years. It shouldn't be surprising that we share so many traditions, but actually we are surprised. Some time ago I was watching The Shtisel TV series about Orthodox family in Jerusalem, and was surprised how many things remind me of my family house. Tea in glasses with metal brackets, schnytsel with mash potato and beetroot with horseradish...
In 1569 Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe (and still is). Historians have used the label paradisus iudaeorum (Latin for "Paradise of the Jews"). Poland became a shelter for Jews persecuted and expelled from various European countries and the home to the world's largest Jewish community of the time. According to some sources, about three-quarters of the world's Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century. (Wikipedia). There was many Jewish's entries to Poland from the beginning of 10 century. In 21 century it's hard to describe who influenced who, with polish traditional foods. My Grandma, (she had Jewish neighbors across the road) always made "macas" after she finished a bake of breads, she placed those tarts, made of the same dough as bread, in the entry of coal oven for a few minutes, we called those macas as "podplomyki". They were delicious. I have a copy of book by Eugeniusz Wirkowski, printed in 1988, named "Cooking the Polish-Jewish way". This book is available in French, Polish, English and German. For me, personally, these recipes could be very easy as polish, or jewish, or german's.
Another dish present in both Polish and Jewish cuisine is barszcz/borscht. In the 1990s, my dad, who's a physician from Poland, was doing his residency in New York. Around the holidays, his Jewish co-worker called him. During their conversation, he asked my dad what are traditional Polish Christmas foods. My dad replied that there's this beet soup... and his colleague said "You mean borscht?" My dad was very surprised. For those who are not from North America like myself, in the US borscht/barszcz is considered to be a stereotypically Jewish food. Up through the early 1970s, when many American country clubs and resorts banned Jews, there were many summer resorts in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York that catered primarily to Jewish tourists. Hence, this region was dubbed the "Borscht Belt." When I tell Poles about this, they are always surprised. Then I ask them: "Have you seen 'Dirty Dancing'?" They all have (especially the women). Then I explain that this 1980s love story (which, as a dude, I found boring) is set in the Borscht Belt during the 1960s.
We just got back from three months in Europe, one month of which was in Poland: Gdynia, Gdansk, Sopot, Krakow, Auschwitz. I was ignorant about Poland too, and had the same misunderstandings as you did, and for the same reasons. The visit was entirely eye opening to say the least, and we learned so much of how the Polish people loved and help save as many of their Jewish neighbors as they could. I was also as surprised as you at the similarities in the foods. (My family hails from Lithuania and Kiev-when it was Russian controlled-although I grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia where some of my friends were Polish.) The one food you failed to mention was beet borscht or a similar cold green soup that growing up we called Schav. We came across borscht quite a bit in shops and restaurants and I think I saw Schav too. Have you come across it there? What city are you living in? We loved Poland and found the people very warm and very open. 🇵🇱 ❤️
Hi - thanks for writing. I'm not sure what the cold green soup you are speaking about is, :) -- I actually missed a bunch of foods, I am probably due for a part 2 as I made this video quite a while ago :) Why did you choose to spend a month in Poland?
Potatoes are a vegetable that was brought to Europe after the discovery of America. Certainly, they were not available to every European resident at the very beginning. Wealthy people could use it. It is very likely, as you suggest, that the potato came to Poland from Italy. In Poland there was a queen of Italian origin, Bona Sworza. Together with her and her entourage, a lot of vegetables came to Poland. Moreover, the general name of many vegetables comes from the name of Italy. In Poland they are called "Italian". This may be the path to Poland for potatoes. As for the form of preparation of the potato, i.e. pancakes, it is difficult to say. Try the potato pancakes with apple, they are great. Greetings.
Placki mogły się pojawić dopiero w XIX wieku, kiedy ziemniaki stały się powszechne. To potrawa ludzi biednych jak babka ziemniaczana, czy kiszka ziemniaczana charakterystyczna dla wschodnich terenów dawnej Polski. Raczej placki zostały inkorporowane do kuchni żydowskiej jak my włączyliśmy śledzia czy karpia po żydowsku itp. Te kultury przenikały się 1000 lat wzajemnie.
Ogórki (gurki) kiszone, Kutia, Baba (Kiszka) ziemniaczana a'la gęsia Pipka (more kosher version), Babka (cake), makowiec (mohn roll), possibly Siemieniotka soup too (nowadays illegal), Chałwa (Halava), kasza Manna (great and cheap dish for kids with an addition of grated apple, banana or pear etc), kogiel-mogiel (kugel-mogel), zapiekanka, cebulak, fried Carp fish (Christmas Eve dish), powitalny chleb z solą (bread with salt as a welcoming gesture or as a diet during fasting).
I grew up in 80' and 90'. Then You could buy chałka only on friday and saturday morning. Now every day. Maca was always as snack. Now You can buy maca with onion flavour. I like it cause I prefer pastery without Yeats even in a bread. But my kids really love chałka.
For me (maybe not only for me) maca is kind of emergency food, kept in a desk drawer just in case to have something to eat if I have to stay late at work :-)
Wowwww!! I’m Polish living in Toronto, Canada. I’ve gone to a Jewish restaurant. I began looking the menu up and down with dismay. About 80% percent of dishes offered were dishes I was very well familiar with. Love you man. Long live Israel 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱
We Jews have a love/hate relationship with Poland... and vice versa... the Yiddish saying "You can take the Jew out of Poland, but you cannot take Poland out of the Jew" is true... Several of my uncles served in the Polish Army... 11 of my aunts/uncles were martyrs during the Khurbn... but I still feel a connexion to Poland, we speak Yiddish, we speak Kaschubian at home... Despite all, Kocham Polskę... moja krew pochodzi z Polski, jestem Żydem, który nie może opuścić Polski
"You can take the Jew out of Poland, but you cannot take Poland out of the Jew"...we have already done so......
@@piotrekeshow so?
We have much more common than we think... over 1000 years common history live, coulture, supersitions... but herring in Jewish style (śledź po żydowsku to już nasz wynalazek) :D P.S.Every Friday my grandfather brought challah from work, I liked Fridays very much.
@@bogdansleczkowski1 no way , far less than what you've mentioned ....It was King Kasimir The Great whom we ' thank' for that mess with the jewry.....
Nigdy nie słyszałem takie powiedzenia raczej wiejska odmianę: możesz zabrać człowieka ze wsi ale wsi z człowieka nie wyciągniesz. Miłego;)
For me, as a Pole, it's not that surprising. For many centuries before WW2 Jews were significant minority in Poland (including parts that are now Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine). Try dish called "Karp po żydowsku". If you're lucky, you can even find Kosher Śliwowica, which is considered by many to be the best kind ;) Enjoy you stay in Poland and SMACZNEGO :)
Or 'kawior po zydowsku' - this one is my favourite, especially in Krakow
To też nie do końca. Nazwa "karp po żydowsku" wzięła się stąd, że żydzi w Polsce pochodzili głównie ze wschodu z terenów Rosji - tam powstała sekta hasydów, byli to potomkowie różnych mieszanek etnicznych głównie słowiańsko-turecko-tararskich, po rozpadzie Imperium osmańskiego a wcześniej Kaganatu, rozeszli się po Europie.
Była to głównie ludność biedna, pod wpływem mistycyzmu wschodniego, przypominali trochę dzisiejsze skupiska cygańskie np na Słowacji. Nie asymilowali się, kultywując swój język, wiarę. W ich diecie było sporo taniej i biednej żywności- jak czosnek i cebula. Stąd "karp" po żydowsku, to był po prostu karp w cebuli. W średniowiecznej Polsce karpia podawano bardziej na bogato, a Żydzi jedli dość skromnie. Inne dania polskiej kuchni, które noszą przymiotnik danego kraju lub etnosu, miały często charakter geograficzny lub ekonomiczny - jak np pierogi ruskie (Ruś czerwona- tereny rusińskie) albo placki po węgiersku (kontakty handlowe z Węgrami i import papryki z tego kraju)
I'm Polish and one of my favourite foods is chałka with butter
and plum jam.... necessarily ... mmmhm 😋
but jewish chalka i salty but polish is sweet
@@darragh5250I eat it with nut butter and whatever fruit jam I have.
@@Aska-gx8gx The one that BJ's sells in the US tastes just like Polish chałka, that's why I buy it, but they sell it as kosher Jewish food.
Hi Michael, really enjoying your vids and perspective on Poland.
Fun fact, the potato is actually native to the Americas and arrived in Europe post-Columbus, so most likely both Jews and Poles started eating potato pancakes at the same time, since we were already living together for quite some time at that point.
I’m fascinated with Jewish history in Poland. In case you haven’t been yet, I highly recommend the Polin museum in Warsaw that details the entire history of Polish Jews.
Since Jews lived in many Eastern European countries they adapted their diets to the culture around them
I would say they also contributed to these culinary cultures. It's all intermigelled 🙂
Yes, I agree the Eastern European Jews have different cuisine than those living in the Middle East or Sephardic Jews. They adopted many local foods but also modified them and got inspired by them since many were tavern keepers at the beginning. Like begals from obwarzanek etc. Begal was brought to NYC and the rest is history. From Krakow to NYC.)
Poland, not Eastern Europe.
They mainly lived in Poland.
@@LoLFilmStudios Also the Soviet Union Romania and Hungary
@@AgnesCamillaL Thanks for the clarity gets too easy to forget about “Central” Europe and thinking East and Western Europe
Kogiel Mogiel, !!! It is Jewish dish, sweet, made of sugar and raw egg yolks. I love it! I'm polish and grew up in communist Poland and since we didn't have to too many sweets in the stores, kogiel mogiel was a very good, popular dessert
Kogel mogel rocks!
It is really?! I ate it as a kid in my very post aristocratic home! It was just amazing! The best ever!
Hey Michael! When I visited Israel, I was so surprised to see Halva and Babka, and that people also eat sour pickles. I've never seen this food anywhere outside of Poland. Then I realized that there was a lot of migration from Eastern Europe to Israel and people brought their favorite foods with them. And also that Jewish food stayed in Poland. I'm sure there are even more examples out there. I think it would be cool if the Jewish and Polish people were more aware of their shared bits of culinary culture. At the beginning I was confused about who invented what, but I don't think it's that important. It makes me happy when I go out into the world, where most people have never heard of our dishes, and then I meet a Jew who knows some of them, and likes them too :)
In California you could buy sour pickles and many more only in Jewish stores
Romanians do a lot of sour pickles out of many vegetables. We also have halva, it is Turkish. We have cabanos sausages and all sort of other sausages. Food circulates fast.
@@wertyks508Because there used to be no Polish stores in California. Jews brought dishes from Poland, Russia and other European countries. Did Jews before the diaspora know pickled foods? They did not recognize it until they arrived in Central and Eastern Europe. We have frosty winters and people had to find a way to store food and provide vitamin C and microelements. Pickled foods contain a lot of these ingredients.
as a Polish American (born in Lithuania, actually) my observation is that the foods you mentioned are pretty much common not only in Jewish or Polish cuisine, but also in Lithuanian as well..Pretty much everything you mentioned, was a staple food when I was growing up. matza was probably only exception. I knew about it, but tried it only once or twice. Potato pancakes (aka.bulviniai blynai in Lithuanian) was super popular. I had no idea that they are called "latkes" until I migrated to US. we called Chalka as Chala, maybe that is a regional name variety). And yes, it was sold in regular grocery stores.
Poland and Lithuania was a ONE country almost 400 years. And most of Jewish people in Europe was live in this Commonwealth. So thats why…
Poland in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship they call them bliny , in Silesia Voivodeship they call them Stryki i guess every region has it's own name
Many of those things, are also popular in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia as well;) Placki ziemniaczne/latkes are called "deruny", chala is called chala, and they also eats a lot of "śledź" which is herring, and call it the same as Poles. We also eats krupnik, knish, borsch, and fish meatballs similar to gefilte fish.
@@mikaelmoss1233 Ukraina also was a part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
@@kamilziemian995 Indeed
Great episode! I remember doing a Polish food tour once for a group from Israel and with each stop they said: "OK, OK, all this is fine and tasty, but it's the same stuff we ate as children (or still do). Show us some Polish food!" I guess living by one another for almost a millenium has created a lot of unspoken bonds and traditions that are actually common. I believe food is a good connector here, especially in context of the troubled history that the Jews and Poles share. Also: bagel comes originally from Krakow (first ever mentioned in historical records in the year 1610 in the Kazimierz Jewish commmunity: it was, in fact one of the first communal social help systems to mothers giving birth: a basket full of bagels was a gift for such, as stated by the Kahal of Kazimierz in that particular year). We can guess that bagels might be a Jewish comepetitor to Christian obwarzanek, that you have here at least since the 14th century. Also latkes: one theory gives the name a Slavic origin from the word "łatka" meaning a patch, like on trousers. And a potato pancake kinda looks like one. Cheers and keep on going, Michael!
Wait till you come at 'placek po węgiersku / góralsku / beskidzku' 😉
Kinda the plate sized latka, folded over with some kind of goulash in it 😁
The 'hungarian' variety is so popular that Polish tourists in Hungary were asking so much for it that they actually started to make them there 😁 (it's not in any way actually Hungarian, we just named it as such 😁)
Lots of words in Polish comes from either Yiddish language such as: hucpa, cymes, bachor, bajgiel, belfer, ciuch, rejwach, szmonces, ślamazara, plajta. The spelling probably differs but, pronounciation should be similar.
I siksa hehe
To są słowa żydowskie i używane wyłącznie w stylizacji wypowiedzi. Do lat 70tych funkcjonowała w Polsce przestępcza subkultura gitowców, git ludzi - getes - w której obowiązywała przestępczą gwara - grypsera - wywodząca się z jidisz. Przeglądałem kiedyś pitawal Kraju Nadwiślańskiego /zabór ruski/ z 1905roku. Zawierał on statystyki przestępstw z podziałem na nacje - żydzi w zależności od kategorii przestępstwa stanowili od 70 % do 99% osadzonych w więzieniach stąd pochodzenie grypsery jest jasne.
It doesn't come from Ydish, Ydish is a combo of Hebrew, Slavic languages and German
@@bobeczek01 jidisz to żargon języka niemieckiego. Z kilku zapożyczeń z innych języków nie powstaje żadne kombo
My Polish grandmother added the chicken heart and liver and whatever else the butcher threw in with the chicken into the soup and called all that the pipek. Her next-door neighbor and best friend in her apartment in the Bronx was Jewish. I remember them speaking Polish together, of course, but also another language and years later, I realized it must have been Yiddish. Somehow, my Polish grandmother, knew some Yiddish ❤ .
Chałka with kakałko (cocoa) is the essence of our life :D
😂
Albo z masłem i miodem 🤤
Chałka or maca are very good with Jewish caviar😊
z dżemorem i masłem
❤
Hi! I'm from Poland. About the "Latkas" - my grandma called them "Łatki" - so here it is! Sound similar :D thank you for bringing back this memory about Łatki :)
I'm surprised you didn't mention Pączki. They are similar to Sufganiyot, and in Yiddish they are called Ponchik, which is pronounced similar to Pączek, the singular form of Pączki. Like Sufganiyot, Pączki are associated with a religious tradition, in the case of the latter, a way to use up rich ingredients before the start of Lenten fasting.
Honey cake is another food with significance to each culture
Oh those are both good ones.
Also, Berliner (imagine that) has a striking resemblance to what you mentioned. We clearly all lived together sharing traditions, gastronomic practices and experiences from to time to time. There is a rich history there that can be learned from so that atrocities can be eliminated.
Also x 2, Yiddish and history it has. It is such a frustrating history. If only we all knew how much we have in common.
The advent of potatoes came much later than the Jewish settlement in Poland. So it's safe to say the whole Poland-Lithuania got latkes at the same time. The Polish cuisine includes: Pascha for Easter, carp po żydowsku for Christmas, and cymes means something good so you'll find it as a brand of juice or baked goods. Both nations I think treat chiken soup (rosół) as a healing potion.
Clearly… potatoes came from South America to Europe with conquistadors in 16th century.
How was this eight day festival and symbolism of oil from 2000 years ago celebrated before the arrival of potatoes?
@@CallmeEric_123 probably without the potatoes. You can fry different things in hot oil.
Also, don’t forget about Gefilte Fish! My mom made it all the time and we were not Jewish but Polish Americans (parents from Poland) So good! Still remember it! (35 years ago) Ryba faszerowana was the name she called it!
I'm Polish and I've just bumped into this channel by coincidence , and wow, it's so interesting. 😁
Yep, interesting and fun! Michael is absolutely delightful. Pozdrowienia z Warszawy.
you forgot bagels. In Poland they are called obwarzanek krakowski and are sold on many street corners
Also called "bajgiel".
I think obwarzanek is some kind of street food variation of bagel. Too bad he didn't mention this one since it's popular in the whole world and was invented in Kraków
Hi, welcome to Poland! I'm happy to hear you enjoyed our food :) chałka indeed is delicious and we often eat it with jam. Placki ziemniaczane are more than yummy.
Polish cuisine is a heritage of many cultures. We inherited a lot from our regretfuly gone Jewish community and so Polish Jews now living elsewhere brought some of Polish cuisine with them. I think placki ziemniaczane are Polish as well as Kraków's obwarzanki now known everywhere as bagels that Jews brought to NY.
Gęsie pipki is goose stomachs in curry sauce with lots of onions. Full on delicious, I seriously recommend you tried it. Than you did not mention cebularz - a bread bun with onions and popeey seeds which to everyone coming from Lublin like myself is a taste of childhood. It is believed to originate from Jewish bakeries. A city, worth mentioning, whose third of the population was once Jewish. All the best in your daily life here.
I am not from a Jewish family, but my grandmother had Jewish neighbors in Radom. She loved eating maca or sucharki (rusks) with a cup of hot tea or cereal coffee for second breakfast or dessert. She said that it was easily digestible, good for health, and made the stomach rest after heavy, fatty dishes based on meat, lard, onion and sauerkraut, which are abundant in Polish cuisine. As for potato pancakes, I think they appeared at a similar time in many places, as soon as the potato appeared in Europe. That was a huge potato trend :) So probably the first people to make potato pancakes were the indigenous people of South America. Poles and Jews have a lot of common history, very visible in cuisine. It's so sad that our relations are so tense, and at the moment Jewish culture and customs are known in Poland only from American films, and not from the stories of elders, school lessons or the media.
Tyle stuleci żyliśmy razem. Było różnie ale myślę, że te wspólne lata przyczyniły się do wzbogacenia obu kultur. Przez wojnę straciliśmy coś cennego. Ja osobiście uważam, że Was tutaj brakuje. Wasza obecność nas ubogacała. Pokój z Tobą.
ich obecność ich ubogaciła, bardzo ale nie spłacili nigdy Długów Kahalnych a potem każdemu zaborcy budowali bramy powitalne i wysługiwali się im, przeciwko Polakom. Nawet francuzi Napoleona pisali o nich, że robią jako szpiedzy dla rosjan! Tak, bardzo wzbogacili się - wykupywali potem od carskich zaborców polskie ziemie po powstaniach w XIX w. Bardzo się niewdzięczni wzbogacili, łupiąc finansowo Polaków.
@@tomaszser470 tak jakby polska szlachta nie kolaborowała z zaborcami. Dzięki komu powstania nie wyszły i rozpadła się IRP - Żydom, czy polskim panom szlachcicom? A Żydzi w Polsce bywali też bardzo biedni.
@@adapienkowska2605żydzi splajtowali Rzeczypospolitą,potem wysysali majątki Polaków od carskich zaborców. Budowali zaborcom bramy powitalne -ostatnio w 1939 dla sowietów i niemców . Za chwilę żydzi splajtują taki kraj jak USA - zobaczysz, zapamiętaj panno ado pieńkowska (piszę z małej - jak sama o sobie napisałaś, szanuję twoją pisownię)
Honestly ? As a Pole who grew up next door to Aushwitz I have nothing but love for the Jewish people . It honestly makes m saw that some Jews show some hostility towards us.
@@tomaszser470 Zimą 1846 roku galicyjscy chłopi zachęceni przez austriackie władze pokazali jak bardzo czują się Polakami po stuleciach upodlenia i wmawiania im że są innym gatunkiem człowieka. Spadały głowy ciarachów i plebanków. Żydów zostawili w spokoju. Co do bogactwa Żydów (tych nielicznych bogatych nie-relatywnie w porównaniu z nędzą polskiej prowincji, także żydowskiej) - może szlachta powinna zabrać się do ciężkiej pracy zamiast liczyć na przywileje i toczyc bezsensowne powstania w przygotowaniach do których kompletnie zapomniała o tym, że bez chłopów i mieszczan będzie dla zaborców zwierzyną łowną? Pamiętaj, że Żydzi słuzyli szlachcie wypełniając niszę jaką stworzyło brak zamożnego mieszczaństwa i wrodzone ale też usankcjonowana prawem obrzydzenie szlachciurków dla parania się handlem. Oni byli od lepszych rzeczy, zwłaszcza pod koniec I Rzeczpospolitej - żerowania na pracy poddanych, praktykowania dewotyzmu przy jednoczesnej pogardzie dla niżej urodzonych bliźnich i przepijaniu resztek majątku. Żydzi mieli tylko takie przywileje i taką rolę odgrywali w klasowym spoleczeństwie jaką zdecydował się im powierzyć naród polityczny jakim była szlachta. Tam gdzie istniały prężne gminy żydowskie ozywiał się handel i rosły zyski właścicieli majatkow kluczy i miast. Byli - dzięki swym kontakto z innymi gminami z europejskiej i bliskowschodniej diaspory pasem trasmisyjnym dla przepływu dóbr i kapitrału. Nie bez powodu w czasie powstania Chmielnickiego wojska Rzeczpospolitej dbłay o ewakuację ludności żydowskiej z terenów obiętym powstaniem. Tyle na temat patriotycznej szlachty i Żydów, oczywiście w duzym uproszczeniu.
Why is anyone so surprised? Women love talking with each other and sharing recipes!
In Poland “placek po cygańsku”(Roma’s style pancake) is potato pancakes with gulasch. So we have to add Roma people into mix 😂 Welcome in Central-East Europe.
There is no need to add Roma here. This is a dish straight from communism. It has various names; Romani style pancake, Hungarian style pancake, robber pancake.😂😂😂🤣
zdecyduj się to z Rzymu te placki (Roma) czy po cygańsku?
@@tomaszser470 Tu chodzi o Cyganów czyli Romów - Roma people lub gypsy
@@tomaszser470 Cygan to jest nazwa potoczna bo oficjalnie to są ludzie "roma" w języku romskim, czyli romowie po polsku.
@@ppg510 yes, Roma is more polite term than Gypsy. Especially in Polish "Cygan" was and still is often used pejoratively.
Letki seems to be derived from polish "placki" which means pancakes generally. Personally this is my favourite food - the ones on the picture was more german style - city of Poznan has own dialect which calls potatoes "pyry" in plurar - pyry are grated on big holes and result in more "german" occupier version in contrary to rest of Poland where potatoes are completely milled/grated, starch is removed and then fried which makes them fluffier. What I found personally interesting is the fact that another of my favourite food - cymes / tzimmes - is jewish food but it has cultural difference - jewish base it on carrots and make it sweet with fruits while poles and lithuanians make it savoury with smoked pork or beef based on potatoes; It was extremely popular in Vilnus, Kowno and Lida before world wars in both versions.
I remember eating chalka all the time in Poland in the 90s, it was a better tasting, sweater bread that was halfway between white bread and a Polish doughnut. It wasn’t meant for sandwiches, but it was perfect with cottage cheese or spreadable cheese and any kind of jam or honey, then you wash it down with milk, it was perfect for that. Only thing I can compare it to now is Hawaiian bread, cuz it’s a little sweet, but chalka tasted better and looked absolutely amazing!! Gęsi pipek, never heard of it, but lit sound more like “duck neck” than anything else. Also, did you know that bagels were first made in Kraków by Jews, it’s the earliest record of bagels, if you ask me, it’s just a smaller version of chalka.
So glad I found your channel. I'm an Irish writer living in Poland and am fascinated by the history of Polish-Jewish culture. I found it poignant when I moved here to discover that bagels are not so common anymore (at least in my part of the country), despite their origins being in Jewish Poland. Highly recommend Eva Hoffman's book Shtetl if you haven't read it already. Wish I had discovered FestivALT before 2024 submissions closed, but I'll be sure to attend the events! -- Matthew
I grew up in Warsaw. My grandmother loved maca, and we always had it at home. She did tell me it was Jewish food, so it was like something Jewish that my grandma liked since her childhood. A kind of comfort food for her. She grew up as a peasant kid in the Mazovia region. Potatoes came to Poland by the end of the 17th century, so it probably entered the Polish and Jewish cuisine at the same time. It's a kind of food for the poor. Peasants didn't get to eat meat every day. Similarly, during the Communism era we used to have meat 1-2 a week, so potato pancakes were usually at least once a week for dinner. One of the most ironic Polish-Jewish food is karp po żydowsku (carp the Jewish way) which is one of our must have dishes for Christmas Eve (sic!) that I hear is called carp the Polish way in Israel. There are also various kinds of everything kosher, like kosher vodka.
And in my home the “karp po zydosku” was called “karp po grecku” (greek style). I have talked to Greeks and they do not have this dish in their cuisine 😂
@@karolwojcikiewicz1653 Ther is a diffrence between karp po zydosku i karp po grecku. Po zydosku byl w galarecie, po gracku w pomidorach.
@@sochaoracza1506to bardzo ciekawe. W moim domu karp po zydowsku byl smazony w cebuli i pomidorach.
"O ile w Krakowie czy szerzej w Galicji gęsi pipek to gęsie żołądki duszone w cebuli, o tyle na terenie byłego zaboru rosyjskiego w ten sposób określa się szyjki z gęsi nadziewane wątróbkami". 😁
To co było pokazane, to bardziej mi się z pasztetem skojarzyło. Natomiast właśnie żołądków w cebuli bym pojadl. Takie ciężko strawberry i gazujące od środka danie, ale tak pyszne, że nie wiem. Narobiłeś mi smaka 😅😅
@@lukaszchojnowski659 Gęsie żołądki są super. :)
Loved hallah as a kid in the 70s with some butter on it. It was like a dessert. Or just plain, ripping piece by piece. Memories. I miss it in Canada. They might have it in Polish stores here. Hmm, gotta check.
Right. With the cup of milk cocoa.
I became familiar with some Jewish food and customs while living in London and had the same thoughts upon moving to Poland. There does seem to be a lot of crossover.
One you may have forgot is ćwikła z chrzanem, the kind of pink horseradish with beetroot you find on a Passover seder. In Poland you'll find this at the Easter table which has it's own collection of symbolic items. Since the product looks to be very similar, and it's eaten around the same type of year I wonder if there's a connection there.
Funnily when I was growing up in the ninetees in Poland, my mom used to buy me what was called a 'jewish salad' in the grocery store which I really liked. I also loved pastrami, which was available in every meat store back then. Years later I bought in London a sandwich that was called a "New York sandwich" which was filled with pastrami and 'jewish salad'. I was kind of surprised at first but then it all made sense.
Yeah, I remember also "Sledz po Zydowsku".
As a person growing in Poland I never come across Gęsi Pipek, but maybe was not that popular in my region. Best regards and have a nice day!
looks like a version of kiszka ziemniaczana, so maybe it's more eastern?
Actually there are two different dishes called gesie pipki. First is a stew from goose stomachs and the second one (from your video) are stuffed goose necks.
And pipka in Polish is not a dick. It is a pussy and its not a rude word. It is more how would you talk to the children.
Its not pipka. It’s pipek!
Pickled herring is also a Nordic thing, not just Slavic.
absolutely. My Swedish friends love herring.
Hello, I' Polish and I remember my grandma who prepared "podpłomyki" every Friday. Many years later I realized that podpłomyki are nothing more than matza😊
72% of polish people have some jewish traces in DNA.
Ja byłem mały, babcia robiła coś w rodzaju macy z reszty ciasta na kluski, kładła kawałek rozwałkowanego ciasta na rozgrzanych fajerkach i po chwili było gotowe. Mam wrażenie, że teraz się mniej je placków ziemniaczanych jak kiedyś, generalnie chyba cała dieta się bardzo zmieniła od lat 80.
Moja babcia robiła takie same! Coś w rodzaju podpłomyków. Właśnie z ciasta na pierogi :)
nie no, placków ziemniaczanych to się je na potęgę, są dostępne na każdym stoisku garmażeryjnym i można je nawet kupić w żabce. chociaż ja wolę robić swoje, chrupiące, doprawione cebulką :)
Jak ktoś chodzi do McDonald's to mu się dieta zmieniła
@@workoutjohnny3021 piszesz o sobie? Wiem co się jadło w latach 80 a teraz.
Moja babcia też robiła dokładnie w ten sam sposób placki! ..i pamietam, że jako maluchy uwielbialiśmy je wraz z kuzynostwem. Najlepsze beztroskie chwile 😊Pozdrawiam serdecznie!
I am Polish from Jewish origin, but my family lost traditions.
Maca is popular for college students, often ate with śledź on top, but I prefer with hummus.
Also my family eats potato pancakes with yogurt, or I prefer with ketchup. My family has the same Maca recepie from generations.
What I know in Poland are 2 typem of people. One eating lateks with sugar (me) and Another are eating it with Sour cream and salt
@lukaszchojnowski659
I don't like them, neither with sugar, or sour cream. Just solo with salt or sometimes with meat goulash (Hungarian) are the best for me.
@@lukaszchojnowski659ja jem że śmietaną i cukrem.
@@nawgra8455 i też fajne połączenie :) pierwszy raz spotykam. Ale czemu nie.
If I remember correctly, Poland was save heaven in medical times for Jews. Some say they had 3/4 of all Jews, some say 4/5, but still they had a lot of them.
Many of important Poland literature has Jews like Lalka, Wesele czy Znachor.
Cultures also mix. We can see it in the city of Łódź for example. City of 4 cultures. Polish, Jewish, German and Russian.
In the world there are also similar dishes, some inspired by others, some done a little differently. It’s card to say sometimes what food if from what culture as some dishes can be seen as part of one culture, but in reality are also part of other culture.
It's pretty simple to decide "Jewish or Polish". You can change the question to "Jewish or local '' because Jewish people used to live in different regions during diaspora, so if the kitchen was basically Jewish, then it would be similar for Sephardic and Ashkenazy Jews but it isn't. Jewish people were always adopting local cuisine to their kosher rules, changing names of the dishes but following local recipes due to the availability of ingredients and exchange of recipes. However, "original" Jewish cuisine (whatever it was those times) probably influenced somehow the cuisine of the countries where Jews lived, and that's all.
Well there was a time history Polish and Jewish cultures were very much integrated until certain fellow from Austria.
Gesie Pipki is basically goose neck stuffed with potato, onion and sometimes meat to form a kind of sausauge. Its a variation on a theme that produced such food as kaszanka or krupniok and also the kishke that is often found in kosher delis and markets in North America. Since sausage in Poland is usually made in a pig intestine, the jews were forced to get a bit creative in finding casings for sausage type products and the skin from a long goose neck fit the bill. Goose was a quite popular food among both gentiles and the ashkenazi jews of eastern europe as it is delicious, quite large, could be kosher and unlike chickens that at the time tended to be on the scrawny side also produced quite a lot of fat that after rendering then had multiple uses as schmaltz.
Such an interesting video Michael! Glad to have you here in Poland. ;)
It would be nice to also discuss the origins of babka in comparison to chałka/challah. I was surprised to discover that babka, a typically Slavic food, is considered Jewish in NYC. Chałka/challah is undoubtedly Jewish. I concede that some variation of Slavic babka may have been adopted into Jewish cuisine, but it originated in Poland or other Slavic countries.
Have you noticed that Chalka and Challah starts with same combination ch and is read same way as [H], which is unique for Polish language?🙊
Note that many foods that Sephardic Jews eat are different. So what is Jewish food depends on environment and the native culture in which Jews were immersed. So many foods of Ashkenazi Jews is not food that Jews brought from MIddle East but what was developed and borrowed in Central and Eastern Europe from Germanic and Slavic cultures. Most likely dough for challah was developed in Northern France and Germany. It is really a brioche dough. BTW challah is great for French toast.
But it was Poland, rather than France, that was the main producer and exporter of grain in the Middle Ages. And Jews were ones of the major traders in grain. I did eat brioche in France, and though I loved it, it didn't taste the same as our chałka.
@@sylwiatime Brioche has egg, sugar and butter while challah has oil instead of butter to make it kosher, i.e., that you can eat challah with meat. And grain exports have nothing to do with it.
@@peterkiedron8949 Do people really eat challah with meat?
@@sylwiatime Yes, it's a part of sabbath dinner that has meat dishes.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This dilemma in the case of dishes that we eat in Polish is simple. We have been living together there for more than 1500 years, Jews were forbidden to work on the land and serve in the army, so they could not prepare their own dishes because they did not sow anything and did not harvest anything. They could only eat what Polish farmers had harvested for them and probably showed what could be done with it.
In Radoszyce there's a regional delicacy called "kugiel". There's even a kugiel competition. I was suprised when I watched Netflix "Shtisel", where they'd eat kugiel (I was positive about it being Polish food).
Oh wow I didn’t realize. Yes Kugel is very Jewish!
I think eating buckwheat/kasza is also a good common thing to eat in both cultures ❤
Jews used to live in Poland for around 700 years, so it's not a surprise that cuisine would be quite common in both cultures.
Maca is pretty popular among health freaks and/or travelers. Given modern diet and stressful lifestyle maca can help with digestion. It doesn't get expired fast so it's good when travelling
And it doesn't taste that bad. Especially if you have access to tasty toppings
Are you trying to push Michael to eat more maca?
You can get Challa in Austria, too. We call it Striezel, it's made of a slightly sweet very fluffy wheat dough with yeast. Among Gentiles, it was a traditional dish for All Saints Day when wintertime really sets in. Also, latkes are a common dish in many German regions, called Kartoffelpuffer in German. They were a traditional food for Lent and they are served with apple sauce.
Kartoffelpuffer is my new favourite word!!
Uwielbiam chałka, smak dzieciństwa 😊
Jewish culture and Polish culture have intertwined for 1,000 years. I recommend the Polin museum in Warsaw. You will find traces of this interaction in the cuisines of both nations. Let's start with bagels, which were started baking by Krakow's Jews in the 17th century. It was bread given to a woman after a successful childbirth . Do not confuse them with obwarzanek krakowski, which has been baked since the 14th century. These are two different types of baked goods from Krakow. Bagels came to the USA with 19th century emigration.
Etymology of the word 'pipek'
1. «something hanging or sticking out of something»
2. contemptuously 'about someone helpless, clumsy'
Gęsi pipek is known in two versions: stuffed goose necks and stuffed goose stomachs. The necks are stuffed with a stuffing of grated potatoes with onion, and less often with meat (e.g. kosher beef). The stomachs are stewed in oil or goose lard with onion and garlic. Potato pancakes(placki ziemniaczane), potato cake(babka ziemniaczana) and potato kiszka(kiszka ziemniaczana) are dishes of poor peasants from the areas of former eastern Poland. It's hard to find ancient roots in potato pancakes. Potatoes became popular only in the 19th century. Remember that many poor Jews lived in eastern Poland. In the canon of Polish cuisine you will find: Jewish-style herring, Jewish-style carp in jelly, and Jewish-style stuffed carp. These are very popular dishes. You will often find them on the Christmas Eve table in Poland. It's a paradox. Sometimes you'll come across a restaurant in Czulent. Cholent, ciulent (Yid. טשאָלנט, cholnt) is a traditional meat and vegetable goulash dish of Jewish cuisine, such as ragoût, eaten on Shabbat. I could list such dishes for a long time.
Placki ziemniaczane aka potato cakes love it. This is an amazing example of culture mixing among people who lived together for centuries. Plus show me a Pole who has never uttered the words "oi wei"... Speaking bout "oi wei" I was waiting for a plane from Munich to arrive at LAX. When they announced the delayed arrival I uttered "oi wei" what I heard from the back was "oi wei right we are going to be late for Bar mitzvah"
That was super interesting. I was always sure chałka is typical Polish food (that I love btw), great funfact
I am a Pole and all these are a surprise to me besides maca (where there is a vague link to Jewish culture for me). The rest of them feels so Polish that I never would have thought they could be Jewish 😊
That’s amazing. I assumed all Poles knew Chałla was a Jewish thing :)
@@lerubenfeld on the other hand my parents told me that we stole eating carp fish from Jewish culture but you never mentioned it so I guess it is not true? I hate carp btw and only consider eating it on Christmas where it is the main thing to eat, most Poles have similar opinion so you could say Carp is our Maca for Christmas. Apart from the fact that there is no biblical reason to eat carp on Christmas but here it is, every Christmas, on most Polish tables 🤣
@@wsiur this could be true -- gefilte fish is made from carp -- I didn't say everything thing in this video -- maybe I will make a part two :)
@@wsiur I'm not sure if eating carp in general was that influence, as long as Poland used to be much more inland then is today so tradition of eating fresh water fish is much more rooted in our cuisine than sea fish.
But there is a dish called karp po żydowsku which is one way to prepare it.
Another dish that comes to my mind is sałatka po żydowsku, which is essentially patatoes & onions with dip of mayo and cream salt and lots of pepper - as simply as it sounds, I love it. The rich version is with herring pieces.
@@lerubenfeld part two? Yes, yes, yes!!
My suggestions:
Pascha (Pessah" - a dessert made of curd cheese, egg yolks , honey and raisins- it's often served here for Easter and it's of Jewish origin.
Cymes- dessert made of potatoes and dried plums, carrots, raisins boiled with sugar cynamon, not as popular as "pascha" but still known.
The word "cymes" in Polish means something very unique and very good.
I make both these dishes sometimes around Easter .
This is not surprising. Slavs and Ashkenazi Jews lived together for hundreds of years and thus cultures and people mixed. Many times when I see friends who visit kosher shops in the states I see dishes that could easily be bought in a shop near my home.
And does it matter who invented a particular dish? Not very much, in my opinion. What matters is that both cultures eat it and, most importantly, it tastes good to them :)
Kogiel Mogiel! It was probably my fav sweet “snack” grandma had in offer for her grandchildren :))
The best fermented pickles (not vinegar) i've ever tasted were pickles bought in some kosher store in toronto. It tasted almost like the ones made by my babcia, you can't get pickles like this even in polish stores.
w sklepie nie możesz dostać dobrych ogórków kiszonych z prostej przyczyny, proces fermentacji musi zostać zatrzymany aby móc to sprzedawać. Ogórki takie są z dodatkiem octu (niewielkim) albo podległy pasteryzacji, więc nie są już takie smaczne.
@@magorzatabanasiak5787 Nieprawda. W wielu sklepach sprzedają ogórki kiszone BEZ octu. Najlepsze są żydowskie Ba-Tampta. Fermentują ciągle jak potrzymasz dłużej to zmieniają kolor i robią się bardziej miękkie. To samo z kimchi. Cały czas fermentuje, że nawet są bąbelki CO2 jak otwierasz słoik.
Now I wonder if Latke can in any way mean łatka (i.e. patch, like you would sew on an elbow or something) they can kinda look like one if you sqyint hard enough 😁
My theory is that patatoes arrived Poland when there was already big jewish community established here.
So placki ziemniaczane became then common dish for Poles and Jews right from beginning.
Traditions are not as old as we are being told. Poles and Jews did not begin to eat potatoes until late 18 century so certainly potato pancakes came even later. However pancakes could have been made form parsnips or Jerusalem artichokes (also from America) that preceded in popularity potatoes in Europe but later became kind of forgotten.
I'm from Poland and here in my region we love to eat Cebularz which people say is also Jewish food
Chałka with cold butter and strawberry jam at breakfast, and a big pile of potate pancaces until end of the day - that's my definition of happines !
You are more than welcome... anytime Brother 🙂 You seem to be very polite and nice person.. about pancakes we adopted potato pancakes when it was bad.. as my grandmother remembers ;)
Nothing beats onion bun in Lublin area... When I was teenager every Saturday moning. on the the way back from student disco club in Lublin we always stoped to.local bakery to get hot onion buns.. ..
I also had a chance to go.to.Jewish bakery in Toronto to try to get onion buns but they do not make the same like in Poland but still very delicious..
All the best
In the US, BJ's Wholesale sells some Polish and Jewish food. I buy from them Challah bread, I also bought gefilte fish, Polish ham and pickled mushrooms.
when one of my grandmothers was young she use to buy challah from a polish bakery, where it was sold as polish egg bread.
Yeah, but American diaspora still live in more less the same cultural circle as Europeans. I think those similarities are even more striking when particularly Israelis visit Poland or vice versa, as Israel in Poles' common opinion is viewed as exotic/faraway country (and I guess they view us in more less the same way).
Funfact #1: in every polish house you can find a bin under a sink in the kitchen. You visit your friends' home or sth, need to throw away some trash - just find a kitchen and open the cupboard under a sink - congrats, you just found a bin. What was surprising for me - this rule works just as fine for literally every home I visited when I was in Israel :D
Funfact #2: Lovely Israeli couple once tried to explain Israeli politics to me. They said sth like "you know, we have Hebrew word for it, it's just a "balagan"" (or "burdel", don't remember exactly), to which I just burst out laughing, as this word comes directly from Polish and pretty much desribes polish politics just as well :D
Actually Polish borrowed bałagan from Jews.
@@joannapawlina4670 yeah, that wouldn't be surprising :D
In Polish tradition there are also some foods and drinks that are made only once a year. I really like a compote made of dried fruits that we drink on Christmas but it's hard to get them in other parts of the year. The little ear-shaped dumplings are also popular with borscht or mushroom soup on Christmas but nobody makes them on a daily basis. And of course we borrowed gefilte carp from Polish Jews and eat it on Christmas Eve (but it has too many fishbones for me).
One food that I know comes from Jewish cuisine is cebularz, so pancakes with diced onions. Those can be easily bought in Warsaw, but for the good stuff you have to come to Lublin, as it is a bit of regional dish.
Another one is carp, which after the war has become a traditional Christmas eve food in Poland and, from what I've read is based on pre-war Jewish dish. One of the more popular ways to serve it is even called "karp po żydowsku" so "carp in Jewish style".
This kind of makes sense as there was a large Jewish population in Poland before WWII. Great video.
In the Lublin area an onion cake called "cebularz" is very popular. The Jews of Lublin were first to make it in the XIX century. When I was a kid growing up in Lublin, I thought cebularz was avaiilable throughout the country but, apparently, that is not the case.
It's also in Mazovia
Cebularz nie jest tylko czymś co się je na wschodzie Polski. Dostaniesz go praktycznie w całym kaju.
Cebularz is called Bialy in the US. According to the Wikipedia, Bialy, originally from the city of Białystok in Poland, is a traditional bread roll in Polish Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine. Before WW2 Bialystok was about 50% Jewish.
@@cyberagent008 Lublin was also very Jewish, it had the biggest Jewish university in the world before WW2.
in Voivodeship Lubelskie you can find "cebularz" which is somethin like pizza, but dough it's more for like a bun not pizza topped with onion and poppyseed. Adding butter and you can eat that all day long. If you are to go anywhere in Poland, that's should be on your bucket list :) :) Cheers !
Yes, Lublin is a beautiful city - also with an interesting Jewish history.
4:00 Put butter on it and it's cool. Or better: cream cheese,salmon and chives. I do like it.
6:05 Chanuka is much older then potatoes get known for non-native American, so it's seems having its origin in Poland or Italy.
What about polish carp "karp po żydowsku"? What about "miodownik" (honey cake)?
Well Michael the question is who first make pancakes from potatoes: In 1536, Spanish Conquistadors in Peru discovered the flavors of the potato and transported them to Europe. At first, the vegetable was not widely accepted. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced potatoes to Ireland in 1589, but it took nearly four decades for the potato to spread to the rest of Europe.
Europeans did not like potato at first. In France they tried to make into cream soup …it did not take. Finally, someone discovered that they taste best roasted or fried with salt.
This is sooo hilarious!!!😂 I just had a conversation with my Jewish neighbor about her "privatizing" all of our bread as Jewish. Challah is ubiquitous in Ukraine. We call it 'kalach'.
Have you tried flavored maca? Onion maca, pepper maca, garlic maca :D Go for it! I also always treated it as light food, like when you have stomach problems or you are on some restrictive diet for health reasons.
I always thought that Polish food was very good. After coming to America in 1981 and going several times to French restaurants-back then we didn't have any of them in Poland-you can't imagine my surprise when I realized that the Polish food I grew up on and liked so much was actually French.
Lots of Polish was with Napoleon, so I'm not surprised it could be originated in either of the countries.
Nicolas Stohrer was a Polish pastry chef, completed his apprenticeship in the kitchens of Stanislav Leszczyński, king of Poland. Stohrer became a pastry chef for Marie Leszczyńska, daughter of Stanislav, and followed her in 1725 to Versailles after her marriage to King of France Louis XV. In 1730, when his employment contact with Maria Leszczynska ended, he opened the very first pastry shop in Paris that is operating to this day.
Almost 700 years of shared history, we lived side by side so its natural your food (Jewish) will be ours, and ours will be yours.
I wouldn't go with latkas or potato pancakes (placki ziemniaczane) that far. I mean if you look at it, it must have been a food source for the poor just like Belgian (French) fries. Those potato pancakes are also popular in Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine or Belarus. In Poland we have a dish called "Placki po węgiersku" tr. "Hungarian pancakes", which generally are potato pancakes with goulash :) That's why I used to think potato pancakes are a Hungarian thing ;)
I used to live in Upstate New York. At Wegmans supermarket I often visited Jewish section to buy Polish food :)
Poles and Jews lived together for more than 500 years. It shouldn't be surprising that we share so many traditions, but actually we are surprised.
Some time ago I was watching The Shtisel TV series about Orthodox family in Jerusalem, and was surprised how many things remind me of my family house. Tea in glasses with metal brackets, schnytsel with mash potato and beetroot with horseradish...
In 1569 Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe (and still is). Historians have used the label paradisus iudaeorum (Latin for "Paradise of the Jews"). Poland became a shelter for Jews persecuted and expelled from various European countries and the home to the world's largest Jewish community of the time. According to some sources, about three-quarters of the world's Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century. (Wikipedia). There was many Jewish's entries to Poland from the beginning of 10 century. In 21 century it's hard to describe who influenced who, with polish traditional foods.
My Grandma, (she had Jewish neighbors across the road) always made "macas" after she finished a bake of breads, she placed those tarts, made of the same dough as bread, in the entry of coal oven for a few minutes, we called those macas as "podplomyki". They were delicious.
I have a copy of book by Eugeniusz Wirkowski, printed in 1988, named "Cooking the Polish-Jewish way". This book is available in French, Polish, English and German. For me, personally, these recipes could be very easy as polish, or jewish, or german's.
Another dish present in both Polish and Jewish cuisine is barszcz/borscht. In the 1990s, my dad, who's a physician from Poland, was doing his residency in New York. Around the holidays, his Jewish co-worker called him. During their conversation, he asked my dad what are traditional Polish Christmas foods. My dad replied that there's this beet soup... and his colleague said "You mean borscht?" My dad was very surprised. For those who are not from North America like myself, in the US borscht/barszcz is considered to be a stereotypically Jewish food. Up through the early 1970s, when many American country clubs and resorts banned Jews, there were many summer resorts in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York that catered primarily to Jewish tourists. Hence, this region was dubbed the "Borscht Belt." When I tell Poles about this, they are always surprised. Then I ask them: "Have you seen 'Dirty Dancing'?" They all have (especially the women). Then I explain that this 1980s love story (which, as a dude, I found boring) is set in the Borscht Belt during the 1960s.
We just got back from three months in Europe, one month of which was in Poland: Gdynia, Gdansk, Sopot, Krakow, Auschwitz. I was ignorant about Poland too, and had the same misunderstandings as you did, and for the same reasons. The visit was entirely eye opening to say the least, and we learned so much of how the Polish people loved and help save as many of their Jewish neighbors as they could. I was also as surprised as you at the similarities in the foods. (My family hails from Lithuania and Kiev-when it was Russian controlled-although I grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia where some of my friends were Polish.) The one food you failed to mention was beet borscht or a similar cold green soup that growing up we called Schav. We came across borscht quite a bit in shops and restaurants and I think I saw Schav too. Have you come across it there? What city are you living in? We loved Poland and found the people very warm and very open. 🇵🇱 ❤️
Hi - thanks for writing. I'm not sure what the cold green soup you are speaking about is, :) -- I actually missed a bunch of foods, I am probably due for a part 2 as I made this video quite a while ago :)
Why did you choose to spend a month in Poland?
Potatoes are a vegetable that was brought to Europe after the discovery of America. Certainly, they were not available to every European resident at the very beginning. Wealthy people could use it.
It is very likely, as you suggest, that the potato came to Poland from Italy. In Poland there was a queen of Italian origin, Bona Sworza. Together with her and her entourage, a lot of vegetables came to Poland. Moreover, the general name of many vegetables comes from the name of Italy. In Poland they are called "Italian". This may be the path to Poland for potatoes.
As for the form of preparation of the potato, i.e. pancakes, it is difficult to say.
Try the potato pancakes with apple, they are great.
Greetings.
Placki mogły się pojawić dopiero w XIX wieku, kiedy ziemniaki stały się powszechne. To potrawa ludzi biednych jak babka ziemniaczana, czy kiszka ziemniaczana charakterystyczna dla wschodnich terenów dawnej Polski. Raczej placki zostały inkorporowane do kuchni żydowskiej jak my włączyliśmy śledzia czy karpia po żydowsku itp. Te kultury przenikały się 1000 lat wzajemnie.
Ogórki (gurki) kiszone, Kutia, Baba (Kiszka) ziemniaczana a'la gęsia Pipka (more kosher version), Babka (cake), makowiec (mohn roll), possibly Siemieniotka soup too (nowadays illegal), Chałwa (Halava), kasza Manna (great and cheap dish for kids with an addition of grated apple, banana or pear etc), kogiel-mogiel (kugel-mogel), zapiekanka, cebulak, fried Carp fish (Christmas Eve dish), powitalny chleb z solą (bread with salt as a welcoming gesture or as a diet during fasting).
I grew up in 80' and 90'. Then You could buy chałka only on friday and saturday morning. Now every day. Maca was always as snack. Now You can buy maca with onion flavour. I like it cause I prefer pastery without Yeats even in a bread.
But my kids really love chałka.
What’s not to love :)
Gołąbki are also Polish and Jewish food. My Jewish friend had a tears in his eyes and said. " My mama made the same ".
The foods you describe are widely eaten throughout the Slavic nations. Hardly surprising as we have a lit of history together
I always have one box of matza in my house. It’s good with peanut butter or cheese with tomato.
You need to add kugiel with pickles:)) very popular in my town in eastern Mazowsze.
Potatoes anyway came from America (Peru) only 500 years ago, so no latkes in the temple, at least not with potatoes.
For me (maybe not only for me) maca is kind of emergency food, kept in a desk drawer just in case to have something to eat if I have to stay late at work :-)
You noticed things about Polish and Jewish food after I noticed them. Good for you.
Wowwww!!
I’m Polish living in Toronto, Canada. I’ve gone to a Jewish restaurant. I began looking the menu up and down with dismay. About 80% percent of dishes offered were dishes I was very well familiar with.
Love you man.
Long live Israel 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱
Do Jews still eat cebularz? It's a famous food in Lublin.
Israel was a culinary feast for me. Pierogi with olives on the side! Amazing
Hello! Try maca with butter on top of it - its great and adds an even better taste; i like it a lot! All the best! 🙂