Pomorskie is famous for its hospitality. How to express it fully? Serving unique dishes. Prepared slowly, from the highest quality natural ingredients, without dyes and enhancers. The crowning glory of Pomeranian dishes, the recipes of which are passed down from generation to generation, is their inclusion on the prestigious List of Traditional Products kept by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. There are already 177 Pomorskie specialties on it.
In these festive and everyday recipes, tried for decades, there are dishes made of potatoes (the most available in the countryside), fish – which Pomorskie and the lake district abounds in, meat dishes, soups and delicious desserts.
Kashubian cuisine was dominated by fish, rutabaga, potatoes and buttermilk. Meat was eaten during family and religious holidays. The most common dish was mashed potatoes with cracklings and buttermilk. Often, plince (pancakes), i.e. fried raw grated tubers (potatoes) or char (noodles) put on water or milk, went to the table. Extremely original is Kashuby sausage, which is prepared from potatoes, buckwheat, eggs and smoked pork fat. If you want to eat Kashubian herring, you need to pay attention to the origin of the fish. Apparently, the best taste is the one bought straight from the net from fishermen.
Śledzie pomorskie, fot. PROT
In Kociewie, a traditional dish is Szandar – potato cake, which is served warm with onion and pickled cucumber salad. One of the most popular dishes is the mushroom casserole, which resembles bread with a toasted crust.
In the past, our region was not affluent: the sea is far away and the land is not very fertile. Therefore, the basis of the kitchen were the ingredients that every housewife had at hand or in the home garden.
The Pomorskie kitchen is filled with pots of sour rye soup, yellow turnip soup and a simple broth made of potatoes with mash, called the play soup or the beggar’s soup. Blueberries with pears and Gdańsk wafers are fried, yeast cakes are baking, freshly roasted grain coffee, called Brëjka by Kashubians, smells good. The most delicious is the smell of bread baked in the homestead, served with lard melted for the winter and pickled cucumber.
Fresh bread, photo by Łukasz Stafiej
The Mennonites, on the other hand, did not think about healthy eating. Although they were conservatives and shunned novelties, they did not deny themselves fatty meats, cottage cheese, and oversweetened cakes. This was reflected in their silhouettes. We owe the Mennonites a local alcohol called machandel, i.e. vodka with a juniper flavor that has been competing with Gdańsk vodka for centuries.
Set off on a journey with the culinary atlas around Pomorskie. Take a look at our three gastronomic lists that create specific culinary trails.
Stobbes Machandel - juniper vodka produced by the Mennonite Stobbe family. photo. Mark Opitz
