1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (101 page)

At various times, we choose our foods for different reasons from pure pleasure to health to convenience or economy. But there are foods we delight in because they link us to a long chain of history and meaning: lamb and eggs at
Easter, a
bûche de Noël
at Christmas (see
listing
), hamanstaschen for Purim (see
listing
), carp for New Year’s, and many more.

Joining the list of such treasured dishes is
kutya
, a sweet and healthful dessert pudding that is traditional on Christmas Eve in the wheat-growing regions of Poland and Ukraine. Cooked, drained, and cooled, shiny, sun-gold whole wheat berries much like the Italian farro are stirred through with honey, chopped almonds or walnuts, and ground poppy seeds, the poppy seeds sometimes softened with a splash of heavy sweet cream. The result is a seductively sweet, silky, nutty, and crunchy preparation much like
mote con huesillo
in Chile, the
kamhie
of Lebanon and Syria, and Armenian
anoush abour
(see
listing
), give or take some rose water, raisins, and dried or candied fruits here and there.

The difference lies in the ceremony, one in which parents and children might enjoy taking part. Before guests eat their fill, a small bowl of kutya is placed outdoors to bribe Father Frost as insurance on the next season’s crops. An additional spoonful or two is set on a dish to feed departed spirits who may return home on that festive night. Finally (and best of all), a cupful or so of the kutya is tossed up to the ceiling. The number of grains that stick predict how many bees a farmer will have in his hive in the year ahead, and is also considered an all-around indication of agricultural prosperity. If nothing else, it is said that this practice keeps wall painters busy around year-end.

Retail and mail order:
In New York
, Moscow on the Hudson, tel 212-740-7397,
moscowonhudson.com
(search wheat groats uvelka).
Mail order:
amazon.com (search jovial organic einkorn wheat berries; rustichella d’abruzzo whole grain farro).
Further information and recipes:
Visions of Sugarplums
by Mimi Sheraton (1968);
Traditional Ukrainian Cookery
by Savella Stechishin (1991);
Please to the Table
by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman (1990);
foodnetwork.com
(search kutya).

A surprisingly crunchy cake, beloved around Easter.

The Polish have a great tradition of sweets, particularly cakes, and the
mazurek
(mazurka in English) is one of the best known, and best loved, of all. Sweet, airy, and crunchy, like a very buttery meringue with a texture reminiscent of a short crust or a sweet wafer, the mazurek is cut into small squares from a larger piece. It may be topped with jam, vanilla cream, or any type of fruit gel, and then decorated—a crucial step, as mazureks are always elaborately decorated with all manner of lavish patterns and inscriptions—with nuts, candied fruits (especially orange peel and cherries), marzipan, and icings. In bakery windows, mazureks are easy to spot because they’re so lovely and colorful—and there are so many types, from
raspberry-walnut to fig to chocolate cream, from which to choose. The special treats are included in almost every holiday celebration, but most especially Easter, when they are decorated with tiny iced lambs and inscribed
Wesołego Alleluja
(Happy Easter).

The origins of the dessert are unclear, but historians guess that mazurek has been made for centuries and was most likely inspired by the sweet pastries of Turkey. The name supposedly comes from the famous Polish folk dance of the same name—Chopin wrote many mazurkas, and the theory goes that the cake was served at the fashionable parties where they were danced. (Not, one assumes, simultaneously.)

Where:
In Warsaw
, A. Blikle, tel 48/22-826-6619,
blikle.pl
;
in Brooklyn
, Old Poland Bakery, tel 800-467-6526.
Further information and recipes:
Polish Heritage Cookery
by Robert Strybel (2005);
The Art of Fine Baking
by Paula Peck (1961);
The Art of Polish Cooking
by Alina Żerańska (1989);
easteuropeanfood.about.com
(search polish royal mazurek);
foodnetwork.com
(search mazurkas).

When Lee Radziwill wanted to surprise her Polish-born husband, Prince Stanislaw Albrecht Radziwill (known as Stash), for his birthday, she contacted the famous bakery of A. Blikle in Warsaw. The dessert she had flown to their London home was not a birthday cake, but rather hundreds of the small, sweet-smelling, yeasty pastries called
pączki
(PAN-tshki), for which the Warsaw patisserie had been known since 1869.

Among other celebrity fans of the puffy wonders was General Charles de Gaulle. A young lieutenant serving in France’s military mission to Poland from 1919 and 1921, he was billeted in a room above the Blikle bakery. And as the president of France after World War II, he demonstrated his fond memories of those pastries by downing more than a few.

What’s all the fuss about? Pączki are jelly doughnuts with a difference. Made from a firm-textured, slightly sweet, rum-scented yeast dough, they are quickly deep-fried in hot vegetable oil (or, even more flavorfully in the old days, lard) to develop richly brown and crusty tops. Within each crunchy cruller are delectable globs of silky jam—darkly purple prune, golden apricot, bright cherry or, in the spring, rose petal preserves—providing luxurious contrast to the gently crisp pastry.

Dusted with lemon-or vanilla-perfumed confectioners’ sugar, pączki make wonderful companions to tea or coffee at any time of day. Poles everywhere seek out these delectable pastries on New Year’s and Shrove Tuesday and then all through Lent. In Warsaw at these times, Blikle bakery is mobbed.

Where:
In Warsaw
, A. Blikle, tel 48/22-826-6619,
blikle.pl
;
in Buffalo, NY
, on weekends, Muzurek’s Bakery, tel 716-768-2157,
muzureksbakery.com
;
in Chicago
, Racine Bakery, tel 773-581-8500,
racinebakery.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Art of Polish Cooking
by Alina Żerańska (1989);
Polish Cookery
by Marja Ochorowicz-Monatowa (1958);
seriouseats.com
(click Recipes, then search paczki).
See also:
Sufganiyot
;
Berliner Pfannkuchen
.

Romanians and Bulgarians, among other Balkan people, share a distinct and unusual preference for a winey sourness in many of their dishes—in fact, they have a special category of sour soups known as
ciorbas
(chee-OR-bahs). The souring comes by way of dill, sauerkraut juice, sour cream, buttermilk, yogurt, lemon juice, or vinegar, as well as the citric acid crystals known as sour salt. Cooks also rely on tart fruit such as green plums or grapes to provide the sought-after taste.

Many home cooks throughout the region make a sour soup based on smoked pork, broad beans, and sauerkraut. But that’s just the tip of the ciorba iceberg. Among the most favored is a Romanian specialty that combines meatballs, rice, pot vegetables, and the chopped cucumberlike herb lovage in a warming and filling soup. In one of Bulgaria’s beloved soups, meat-stuffed zucchini go into a marrow-enriched stock along with dill, parsley, cilantro, lovage, and pot vegetables. The soup is thickened with an ivory blend of egg yolk beaten through sour cream.

When a fish soup-stew is on the menu in Romania, look for a thick and chunky
ciorba de peste
redolent of bay leaves, garlic, and a last-minute drizzle of vinegar. Finally, a cold and creamy soup based on pungent sorrel sates the urge for sourness in summer. Variations don’t end there, of course—this very local penchant gives rise to endless possibilities.

Where:
In Sarajevo
, Restaurant Kibe, tel 387/33-441-936,
restaurantkibe.com
;
in Queens, NY
, Bucharest Restaurant, tel 718-389-2300,
bucharestrestaurant.com
; Romanian Garden, tel 718-786-7894.
Further information and recipes:
The Balkan Cookbook
by Vladimir Mirodan (1989);
easteuropeanfood.about.com
(search romanian sour meatball soup; romanian sour cabbage soup).

Though caviar doesn’t require enhancements, the Russians truly have found a way to render the dark, glowing fish eggs even more magnificent. The extra bit of magic comes via blini, the light and airy buckwheat mini-crêpes leavened with yeast and raised with beaten egg whites and, perhaps, whipped cream. The tender, delicate pancakes are served hot, lightly glossed with soft, unsalted butter just before they are topped with the caviar—red, white, or black—and sometimes with sour cream or crème fraîche
(in which case it’s best to eliminate further toppings like chopped egg, lemon, or the onions that always overpower the delicate roe). The combination of warm, soft, thin buttered crêpe and saline, chilled roe is at once subtle and rich (almost obscenely so), velvety and satisfying.

Served as an hors d’oeuvre, the duo of caviar and blini has long been a staple of Russian high society—but it gained popularity in the grand hotel dining rooms of western Europe in the nineteenth century, and came from there to America. Wherever it is served, the caviar-blini service is always accompanied by shots of ice-cold vodka or elegant flutes of champagne.

Where:
In New York
, Russian Tea Room, tel 212-581-7100,
russiantearoomnyc.com
; Moscow57, tel 212-260-5775,
moscow57.com
;
in Paris and London
, Caviar Kaspia at multiple locations,
caviarkaspia.com
.
Dine-in, retail, and mail order:
In multiple locations around the world
, Petrossian, tel 800-828-9241,
petrossian.com
;
in New York
, Russ & Daughters, tel 212-475-4880,
russanddaughters.com
.
Further information and recipes:
À La Russe
by Darra Goldstein (1983);
Please to the Table
by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman (1990);
epicurious.com
(search blini with sour cream).
See also:
Caspian “000” Beluga Caviar
.

Dried borovik pack the most punch.

Together with truffles and Caesar’s mushrooms, ceps (
Boletus edulis
and
B. aereus
) are unquestionably the world’s most highly prized fungi, even allowing for Japan’s matsutakes and Italy’s porcini. With their puffy, cushionlike cream and brown caps and tender, fat stems, these boletus were favorites of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Although the mushrooms grow wild in Australia, North Africa, and North America, the very best examples are found in the coniferous and broadleaf forests of Poland and Russia, where they are called
borovik.
They reach their harvest peaks between September and late November, and come fall, anyone driving outside of large Polish and Russian cities will be met by roadside vendors offering the borovik they have foraged (much as Americans might find corn or tomatoes or watermelon being hawked along country roads in summer).

The delicately earthy, fresh mushrooms are enhanced by a quick sauté in butter and perhaps a sauce of sour cream and beef stock, with a grating of pepper and nutmeg. But the real magic begins when the borovik are dried, as they are for export to all parts of Europe and the United States. For that is when they take on an intensely smoky, woodsy essence that tastes like ancient history, along with a form that is extremely useful: Looking like antiques, or some sort of brown-gray, handcrafted jewelry, the dried borovik are sold on long, looped strings or
crushed into culinary sachets that scent soups, stews, kasha, sauerkraut, and cabbage, as well as sauces for meat and autumn game birds.