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A year and a half ago I wrote on this blog about [[A Fried Pie and a Fish Dish|two snacks]] from Poland's northwestern city of Szczecin (pronounced: {{pron|shcheh|cheen}}). As I believed their Polish names to be utterly unpronounceable to English speakers, I referred to them as '''PS1''' (''pasztecik szczeciński'', a kind of small machine-produced deep-fried pie) and '''PS2''' (''paprykarz szczeciński'', a canned fish-and-vegetable spread). I wrote about the food of the Griffin City without ever having been there, using what written sources I could find.
Andrzej Szylar (pronounced: {{pron|ahnd|zhey}} {{pron|shih|lahR}}), a chef who happens to hail from that city, was kind enough to comment on my post, providing some interesting additional insight into the seasonings used in the original recipe recipë for PS2. And in February of this year (before the pandemic had reached Poland) I finally visited Szczecin to take part, on Andrzej's invitation, in a culinary event called Night of Herring Eaters. I used the occasion not only to eat some herrings prepared in myriad ways, but also to finally sample the PS1. So now it's time to update that original post with new knowledge and new experiences.
I would like to, once again, thank Andrzej for the invitation, as well as express my gratitude to Ola Gawlikowska and Tomek Sroka for hosting me in Szczecin and showing me around the city.
== A Szczecin Fish Dish with Nigerian Pepper ==
I've already written about the West African dish, allegedly called "chop-chop", which inspired the recipe recipë for PS2. I've also written about "pima", the "very hot spice" that was commonly added to that dish, as well as about my suspicion that it was really nothing more than ''piment'' or chili pepper in French. But Andrzej added to this his own memories and conclusions which I would like to share with you:
{{ Cytat
Whether "pima" is a loanword from Portuguese or French (I'm going with the latter, for phonetic reasons), there's no doubt that it's a kind of chili pepper. All species of pepper belonging to the genus ''Capsicum'', including bell peppers and chili peppers, come originally from the Americas. But once Columbus had made his discoveries, the Europeans found these peppers so appealing that they started to grow them wherever they could. The Portuguese developed one of the hotter varieties and grew them throughout their vast empire, from Brazil, where it's still known as "''pimenta malagueta''", to Mozambique, from where it's spread all over Africa under the name "piri-piri".
But that's not all. In the original recipe recipë for PS2 there was also another spice, which I haven't mentioned yet. This is what we can read in the official description of PS2 as a traditional product of West Pomerania:
{{ Cytat
[[File:{{#setmainimage:Noc śledziożerców (1).jpg}}|thumb|upright=.7|left|Potato salad with smoked herring (top) and chopped herring with gooseberry stew (bottom)]]
I made not one, but two dishes. One of them was a classic potato-and-herring salad I've learned to make from my Mom. Potatoes, apples, red beans, red onions, dill pickles, hard-boiled eggs, a dollop of mayo and mustard… The only departure from the original recipe recipë was that I used ''smoked'' herrings. This may not be a very refined dish, but it's a very tasty one.
The other concoction was more in the realm of historical reënactment, similar to what I once did when writing about [[Genuine_Old_Polish_Bigos#Recipe|genuine Old Polish ''bigos'']] (without sauerkraut or meat). This time it was a herring-and-gooseberry ''bigos''. I used salted pink herrings, which I soaked in milk before chopping them up and marinating in vegetable oil with a selection of spices (black pepper, allspice, cloves, cumin, mustard seeds, coriander, bay leaves, dill, all ground in a mortar). Then I combined them with gooseberries stewed in olive oil with onions, green peppercorns, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. I'm convinced the experiment was a successful one and may be repeated in the future.