Changes

In this post I'm going to continue about the history of bigos, the Polish nation national dish, and also return to ''Pan Tadeusz'', the Polish national epic. We've already talked about 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 in 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 disappeared a moment later).

The Polish word ''bigos'' is often rendered into English as "hunter's stew", but in fact, hunter's bigos, or ''bigos myśliwski'' (pronounced: ''{{small|BEE}}-gawss mish-{{small|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 at 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.

[[File:Koncert Wojskiego.jpg|thumb|The Tribune's Horn Performanceplaying a horn, a hunting scene from ''Pan Tadeusz'' illustrated by Michał Elwiro Andriolli (1881)]]

That more civilization in Russia obtains...obtains…</poem>

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 quote quite know how to describe what bigos actually tastes like.

You may remember from [[Genuine Old Polish Bigos|my previous post ]] that sauerkraut was merely optional, and usually absent, in Old Polish bigos. In Mickiewicz's version, though, it was already an indispensable ingredient of the recipe.

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 be have been at best a side dish rather than an actual ingredient of the bigos! Let's take, for instance, an 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

| In the early part of Augustus III's reign, there weren't that many sumptuous dishes. There was ''rosół'' [meat broth], borscht [sour soup], boiled meat, and bigos with cabbage, made of assorted chunks of meat, sausages and fatback, chopped up finely and mixed with sauerkraut, and called ''bigos hultajski''...…

}}, own translation</ref>

When all the tastes that you need is some are bitter and sour. {{...…}}

Is, just as true bigos, so messy and jumbled. {{...…}}

Found taste in this moral , which hides in the stew.

Gdzie potrzebną przyprawą jest gorycz i&nbsp;kwasy. {{...…}}

Jest to czysty hultajski bigos, mieszanina. {{...…}}

}}</ref> This was is what the author wrote of his own novel in the foreword to the first volume:

| This novel is a messy mixture of everything, {{...…}} just a scaffold thrown to the wind, to hold images haphazardly hung thereupon {{...…}} All bizarrely entangled and without any logic {{...…}} Such will be this book, full of repetitions, chatter and descriptions that fell off the pen wherever they happened to be nudged by my imagination; this is why I've entitled it Bigos Hultajski, which is made from a variety of things. It's a poor man's dish, but a savoury one; and perhaps it will be said of this novel that it is a poor man's roman and an unsavoury one.

| oryg = Romans ten jest nieporządną mieszaniną wszystkiego, {{...…}} jest tylko rusztowaniem na wiatr rzuconym, aby mogło utrzymać obrazy bez ładu zawieszone {{...…}} Wszystko dziwacznie poplątane i&nbsp;bez związku {{...…}} Taką będzie i&nbsp;książka niniejsza pełna powtarzań, gawęd i&nbsp;opisań spadających w&nbsp;nią tam, gdzie wyobraźnia je z&nbsp;pióra strąciła, i&nbsp;dla tego nazwałem ją Bigosem hultajskim, który z&nbsp;różnych i&nbsp;rozmaitych rzeczy złożonym bywa. Jest to potrawa, choć hultajska, ale smaczna, a&nbsp;o tym romansie może powiedzą, że jest hultajski a&nbsp;niesmaczny.

By the time when Mickiewicz wrote ''Pan Tadeusz'', or the early 1830s, ''bigos hultajski'' must had become so popular that it supplanted all other, older, kinds of bigos. Then it could finally drop the disparaging epithet and become, simply, bigos. Every No self-respecting Polish cookbook writer of the 19th century could not 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).

Unfortunately, not everything that tastes good is good for your health. Bigos happens to have the a reputation of a for being an excessively high-fat dish that tends to sit heavy on the stomach. What's more, it is usually made from leftovers, which has often aroused suspicions as to the freshness of its ingredients. You can see it, for example, in ''The Good Soldier Švejk'' by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, where, on the one hand, one should be glad that "''bikoš'' cooked in the Polish way" made a career as an important part of the Austro-Hungarian army's diet on the Galician front, but, on the other hadhand, it was accused by Lieutenant Dub of giving him diarrhoea.

The good thing is that, as the Poles discovered long ago, fine Polish vodka not only pairs ideally with the stew, but is also an indispensable antidote to bigos-induced indigestion.

| In the meantime, Gaudentius, who hadn't failed to provision himself for the journey with leftovers from the feast of Yasnohorod, was busy reheating and consuming bigos, generously seasoned with sausages and fatback, which he had retrieved from his coffer, and washing it down, in strictly calculated intervals, with ample doses of vodka, which he kept by his right-hand side in a large rectangular decanter. {{...…}} Bigos, as is known, induces great thirst, which had to be quenched with a concoction of some kind; nearby, at Finke's, this and other "remedies" were at hand for savouring. This venture, undertaken with certain tact, yet amateurishly, took quite some time; it had been over an hour since the sun had hidden below the horizon, when Mr. Pius was still exorcising the effects of the greasy bigos with last drops from the last bottle.

| oryg = Tymczasem Gaudenty, który nie zaniedbał uprowidować się na drogę okruchami jasnohorodzkiej biesiady, odgrzewał i&nbsp;konsumował wydobyty z&nbsp;jaszczyka, i&nbsp;suto kiełbasami i&nbsp;słoniną przyprawiony bigos, skrapiając go w&nbsp;ściśle wyrachowanych interwałach sporą dozą szpagatówki, która się przy nim, na prawicy, w&nbsp;dużej czworogrannej flaszy znajdowała {{...…}} Bigos, jak wiadomo, wzbudza silne pragnienie, wypadało więc ugasić je jakąś miksturką; pod bokiem właśnie u&nbsp;Finkego było do skosztowania to i&nbsp;owo remedium. Próba ta z&nbsp;pewnym taktem, po amatorsku, odbywana zajęła niemało czasu; słońce już od godziny przeszło ziemski horyzont opuściło, kiedy p. Pius ostatnimi kroplami z&nbsp;ostatniej butelki egzorcyzmował afektacje tłustego bigosu.

So to sum up: there's a dish that is tasty, yet hard to digest and made from ingredients of questionable quality. Let's add significant potential for figurative use and an the undeniable status as of a national dish. What do we get? That's right – bigos as a metaphor for Polish history, society, politics, and Polishness in general!

Is quite right indeed, bigos is good for you.you…

Mr. Ernest Bryll, a 20th-century poet, gave an even more direct answer to the question of what to write of the national bigos. He thinks of it as a "dangerous, heavy dish, {{...…}}, a mixture of everything, but also hacking people to pieces".<ref>{{Cyt

That it brings heavy dreams... dreams…

A less poetic, but no less colourful bigos metaphor was employed by Prime Minister and Minister of Military Affairs, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, when criticizing the state of Polish interwar democracy. Once again, we've got here bigos of the smelly, unhealthy kind, cooked from unfresh ingredients...ingredients…

| As you can see, the constitution is as unbalanced and vague, its language as sloppy, as sloppy are the minds of the MPs. On a general note, I've got to tell you that this sloppy language makes our constitution somewhat akin to paltry bigos made from rotten ham, half-rotten fatback and half-cured sauerkraut; so that each paragraph and article may and should be read completely on its own, without linking it with any other article. Naturally, the rotten ham is for the president, the half-rotten fatback is for the cabinet, and the parliament is left with the half-cured sauerkraut. As you can see, there's nothing their stomachs can do and what comes out is stench, so that it reeks all of Wiejska along Country Street [ulica Wiejska, where the Polish parliament is located] reeks. And the only way out of this chaos is to rewrite the constitution in a decent way. What's more, nobody has the right to interpret the constitution. Interpretation is forbidden – so the state government is left with nothing but bigos.

| oryg = Jak pan widzi, panie pośle, układ konstytucji jest tak chwiejny i nieokreślony, napisana jest tak niechlujnie, jak niechlujnym jest umysł panów posłów. W ogóle powiedzieć panu muszę, że ta niechlujna pisanina czyni z naszej konstytucji coś w rodzaju kiepskiego bigosu, w który obok zgniłej szynki pakują nadgniłą słoninkę i kładą to obok nie dokiszonej kapusty; tak, że można i należy każdy paragraf i artykuł brać zupełnie osobno, nie wiążąc go [...] {{…}} z żadnym innym artykułem. Naturalnie, zgniła szynka jest dla Pana Prezydenta, nadgniła słonina dla [...] {{…}} rządu, no a posłom zostaje nie dokiszona kapusta. Jak pan rozumie, żołądki wtedy nie mogą nic zrobić i wychodzi z tego smród, tak, że ulica Wiejska cała śmierdzi — proszę pana. I wyjście z tego chaosu jest możliwe tylko przez zmianę Konstytucji i napisanie jej w przyzwoity sposób. Dodam do tego, że nikt nie ma prawa interpretować konstytucji. Interpretacja jest zakazana — i wobec tego państwu pozostaje tylko bigos.

| So far, I'v ve been under the false impression that the Polish national dish was bigos, an exquisite stew of cabbage headscabbageheads, 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 fades, as does the noble dish of bigos, as and it is beef tongue in 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 appetizing.

| data = 12 lutego February 1927

| data = 16 stycznia January 2016

That would be some loud cheer! But an even greater curiosity is that, while you can find quite a few descriptions of this tradition in on the Internet (mostly in Polish, though), they all sound quite similar (usually not longer than one or two sentences) and, what's more, none of them cites any source sources of this information. But Surely, if it's really a time-honoured traditionit is claimed to be, then it surely must have been mentioned in some old books, right?

StillHowever, I've been unable to find any mention of the "bigos with a cheer" in pre-Internet sources. You could say, of course, that I could have asked some of those people who wrote or talked about it. Well, I tried, but to no avail. It would turn out that either the source has escaped that person's memory or that it's simply a fact so obvious that no citations are necessary. Besides, you can find information about bigos with a cheer everywhere, I've been told; just grab any 19th-century cookbook that comes at hand. It Well, it is true that old recipes do mention a method of cooking where the pot is sealed with dough. Ćwierczakiewiczowa advises to cook the "English meatloaf" in such a way,<ref>{{Cyt

| data = 26 listopada November 2006

No citation here either and so it has been [https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&oldid=55952526to 55952526 to this day.] I can tell you, as a long-time Wikipedian myself, that any information you find in Wikipedia is worth only as much as reliable is the source given in the citation. And if there's no citation at all? Well, there you go. Yet Wikipedia's reputation is so good that this factoid has quickly spread through the Polish web. Did Mr. Steifer read it in a book I haven't been able to lay my hands on, did he describe an anecdote he had once heard, a family tradition, or did he take it simply out of his own head? This we may never know, as Tomasz Steifer died in 2015.

| Mix some ant eggs {{...…}} into bigos {{...…}} or anything else, {{...…}} so whoever eats it, the bench undereath him will surely creak and it will go into your nose.

| oryg = Mrówczych jajec {{...…}} namieszać w bigos, {{...…}} albo w co inszego, {{...…}} kto będzie jadł tym, pewnie będzie ława trzeszczała pod nim, da się czuć, ale w nos.

For the end, let's return to ''Pan Tadeusz'' one more time, because I've also come across the argument that "bigos with a cheer" is mention 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.