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In this post I'm going to continue telling the [[Genuine Old Polish Bigos|history of bigos]], the Polish national dish, and also return to ''Pan Tadeusz'', the Polish national epic. We've already discussed what the protagonists of ''Pan Tadeusz'' [[Epic Cooking: Breakfast at Judge Soplica's|used to have for breakfast]], but what we omitted back then was the hunters' breakfast from Book IV of the poem. That one took the form of a picnic, out in the woods, shared by a group of hunters who had just successfully concluded a bear hunt (although the bear itself was shot by Father Worm, who mysteriously disappeared a moment later).
== Hunter's Hunter’s Bigos ==
The Polish word ''bigos'' is often rendered into English as "hunter's stew", but in fact, hunter's bigos, or ''bigos myśliwski'' (pronounced: {{pron|bee|gawss}} {{pron|mish|leef|skee}}), is just one of its many varieties. Whether it's a kind of bigos made from game meats or simply bigos eaten by hunters, but made from any kind of meat, is open to debate. As for me, I've never really understood why anyone would enjoy shooting terrified animals, but if Poland's national bard himself (even if he admitted to be "a wretched marksman"<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 43</ref>) wrote so much about hunting in his epic, then let's at least quote a short excerpt, which is still quite up-to-date and may not be appreciated by the pro-hunting lobby in Poland.
Anyway, after the hunt was over, the hunters (who had left home early in the morning with empty stomachs) treated themselves to a feast in the midst of the forest. Fires were built, "meats, vegetables, flour" and bread "were brought from the wagons",<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verses 820–821</ref> Judge Soplica "opened a box full of flagons" of Goldwasser<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 821</ref> (a herbal liqueur from Danzig, or Gdańsk, famous for the gold flakes added to every bottle), while "in the pots warmed the bigos."<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 831</ref> ''Pan Tadeusz'' contains what is without a doubt the most beautiful literary monument to this Polish national dish. Or maybe bigos is considered a national dish because it is mentioned in ''Pan Tadeusz''? Whatever the case, Mickiewicz himself admitted that he didn't quite know how to describe what bigos actually tastes like.
[[File:{{#setmainimage:Aneta Talaga, bigos.jpg}}|thumb|350px|Bigos from ''Pan Tadeusz''.<br />A photo from the [http://www.anetatalaga.pl/index.php/bigos-tradycyjny Ms. Aneta Talaga's appetizing appetising blog.]]]
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| <poem>Mere words cannot tell
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But if we moved back to the times closer to those of the trilogy's characters, we would see that you could have eaten bigos with sauerkraut – but the kraut would have been at best a side dish rather than an actual ingredient of the bigos! Let's take, for instance, an a 17th-century epigram by Wacław Potocki about a Polish nobleman, who went empty-bellied to a banquet hosted by an Italian and returned home just as hungry. By the way, his misadventure is reminiscent of an old anecdote about a Pole who cut his stay in Italy short, because he was afraid that, if he had been treated to grass in the summer, then he would be fed hay in the winter.<ref>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Bystroń
| imię = Jan Stanisław
}}
It was called ''bigos hultajski'' (pronounced: {{pron|bee|gawss}} {{pron|Hool|tie|skee}}), or "poor man's bigos". Back then, the Polish word ''"hultaj"'' ({{pron|Hool|tie}}) referred to an itinerant peasant who travelled from village to village or from town to town looking for various short-term jobs.<ref>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Doroszewski
| imię = Witold
}}, own translation</ref>
''Bigos hultajski'' made a stellar career not only in the culinary realm, but in literature as well – as an ideal metaphor for any kind of messy mixture of scraps which somehow manages to remain appetizingappetising. For instance, a two-act moralizing moralising romantic comedy written by Jan Drozdowski in 1801, bears the title, ''Bigos hultajski, or The School for Triflers'' (''Bigos hultajski, czyli szkoła trzpiotów'').
[[File:Bigos myśliwski.jpg|thumb|Hunter's bigos as painted by Alfred Wierusz Kowalski (1877)]]
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With time, the word ''"hultaj"'' gained a negative connotation that it has today. In modern Polish, it's roughly equivalent to the English "rascal". The origin of the term ''"bigos hultajski"'', now understood as "rascal's bigos", was largely forgotten. Gloger hypothesized hypothesised that "because the best bigos contains the greatest amount of chopped meat, then there is a certain analogy with rascals, or brigands and highwaymen, who used to hack their victims to pieces with their sabres."<ref>Gloger, ''op. cit.''</ref> And so even today we can find explanations, as in [https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&oldid=54979769 Polish Wikipedia,] that ''bigos hultajski'' is a kind of bigos that is particularly heavy on meat and not – as in its original sense – a dish in which the scarcity of meat was masked with sauerkraut.
By the time Mickiewicz wrote ''Pan Tadeusz'', which was in the early 1830s, ''bigos hultajski'' must have become so popular that it supplanted all other, older, kinds of bigos. Then it could finally drop the disparaging epithet and become, simply, bigos. No self-respecting Polish cookbook writer of the 19th century could neglect to include a few recipes for sauerkraut bigos in her works – including the great (both figuratively and literally) Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa. Below, I quote a recipe written by one of her most loyal fans – Bolesław Prus (today remembered as a great novelist and somewhat less remembered as a columnist).
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A less poetic, but no less colourful bigos metaphor was employed by Prime Minister and Minister of Military Affairs, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, when criticizing criticising the state of Polish interwar democracy. Once again, we've got here bigos of the smelly, unhealthy kind, cooked from unfresh ingredients…
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For good or ill, bigos seems to fit the Polish soul and Polish history so well that you can feel Makuszyński's disappointment when he realizes realises that another dish will make a better metaphor of a phenomenon he just observed in Polish society.
{{ cytat
| So far, I’ve been under the false impression that the Polish national dish was bigos, an exquisite stew of cabbageheads, bitter hearts and virulent liver, a dish full of sourness and pungent smells. Someone would always “cook bigos” [i.e., make a mess] for someone else, then they would slap one another in the face, in a newspaper or in a café, and life, replete with rosy cheeks, temperament and fulsomeness, was beautiful. It saddens me, though, to see that tradition is fading away, as is the noble dish of bigos, and it is the Polish-style beef tongue that now reigns supreme on the Polish menu. Bigos was an exuberant dish, announcing itself through its scent from afar, juicy and vigorous. Tongue in the Polish style is more intricate, sweetened with almonds and raisins; it is, indeed, the dumbest part of a thoughtless beast, but the sweetness of its seasoning is ineffably appetizingappetising.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko r = Makuszyński
| strony = 30
| url = https://polona.pl/item/ilustrowany-kucharz-krakowski-dla-oszczednych-gospodyn-smaczne-i-tanie-obiady-dla-domow,OTU1OTQzNTY/57
}}</ref> But still no sight of bigos cooked in a sealed pot, let alone a recipe where a lid blowing off the pot would be a desired effect rather than accident. Nor was I able to find the phrase ''"bigos z wiwatem"'' anywhere I looked.
What I did discover was that this peculiar kind of bigos not only doesn't seem to be mentioned in pre-Internet sources, but it's also absent in online sources that are older than 26 November 2006. So what happened on the particular day? This is when Tomasz Steifer, a painter and heraldist, [https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&diff=5477053&oldid=5246284 added the following information to the "Bigos" article] in Polish Wikipedia:
Whether it's actual ant eggs or a folk name for the seeds of some carminative plant, is not certain. Prof. Jarosław Dumanowski suspects that "ant eggs" may refer to common knotgrass.<ref>Dumanowski, ''op. cit.''</ref>
Finally, let's return to ''Pan Tadeusz'' one more time, because I've also come across the argument that "bigos with a cheer" is mentioned in this epic poem. Indeed, the words ''"bigos"'' and ''"wiwat"'' ("cheer" or "hurrah", from Latin ''"vivat"'', "long live") even appear in the same verse. But who's doing the cheering here – and three times at that? Is it the lid (loudly blowing off) or the hunters raiding the pot (cheering out of joy that the bigos is ready)? I will let you read and decide for yourself.
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