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Epic Cooking: The Last Old Polish Feast

27 bytes added, 23:05, 22 April 2020
[[File:Alexander Adriaenssen - Still life with a&nbsp;ham and chicken on silver plates, glasses of wine and beer, a&nbsp;bread roll, a&nbsp;peeled lemon and an earthenware jug on a&nbsp;table draped with a&nbsp;grey cloth.jpg|thumb|left|"''For the rest, of all viands there was a great stock…''"<ref>A. Mickiewcz, ''op. cit.'', Book XI, verse 147</ref><br>Painted by Alexander Adriaenssen (17th century).]]
When composing the meaty part of our menu, we'll need to make even more use of our own imagination, because the poet didn't mention any specific meat dish dishes in the banquet's description. We only know from the part section about the meal's preparation that meat was plentiful, both in terms of quality and diversity.
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As you can see, most of this flesh was roasted. What's interesting, Czerniecki included almost no instructions for roasting in his cookbook. He must have thought the procedure too simple to even bother writing about; you just stick the animal on a spit and turned turn it over a flame, that's all. Most of his recipes are , in fact, for boiled or stewed meats. But we're lucky to have ten recipes from his addendum to the first chapter, all for roast condiments. The author proposes condiments, or rather sauces, made from mushrooms, garlic, mustard seeds, juniper berries, cauliflower, capers, limes, anchovies, oysters… But let's pick the one that is the simplest to make and also the most typically Polish – the onion condiment.
[[File:Pieczeń po huzarsku.jpg|thumb|"''Others, huge roasts onto enormous spits drag…''"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XI, verses 138–139</ref><br>Hussar-style roast beef as made by Ms. Monika Śmigielska, author of the blog [http://www.kuchennykredens.pl/gwozdz-odswietnego-obiadu-wojna-zapomniana-pieczen-huzarska/ "Kuchenny Kredens",] where you can find a more up-to-date recipe (in Polish).]]
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Roast beef that is sliced not all the way through, with onion filling stuffed into the pockets, is a dish that is still very much part of Polish cuisine today. It was given its current name, "hussar-style beef", in the 19th century, when the stripes of yellowish stuffing reminded our ancestors of the decorative frogging on hussar uniforms.
We know from the poem that poultry was also served. And we haven't yet made any use of the caviar that we know was there. As it turns out, roast capon goes perfectly with caviar, at least if we're to believe Czerniecki. Here's the last recipe from the first chapter of his cookbook:
I'll leave it up to you whether to use Venetian or Turkish caviar.
And finally, to use up the prunes, let's have a dish of stewed meat, let's say veal. This is Czerniecki's recipe for a prune stew:
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