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A Fried Pie and a Fish Dish

26 bytes removed, 11 May
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{{Video|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saDAqZESUGo|szer=350|poz=center|opis=A newsclip from Transnistrian State Television (in Russian) about machine-made ''pirozhki'', which taste just like "``in our Soviet past"}}
[[File:Mikoyan.jpg|thumb|200px|Anastas Mikoyan (1895–1978), chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR]]
Well, the birth of PS2 is directly linked to an efficiency improvement project whose goal was to find some use for the scraps left over from cutting large blocks of frozen fish on Gryf’s freezer trawlers. Forget about entire steaks, which wouldn’t have fit into the cans anyway. The cans were packed with finely ground fish scraps (sometimes with fins, scales and all) and Bulgarian tomato pulp; only rice grains were visible with a naked eye.
The mixture of overcooked flesh, hot spices and onions must have reminded someone in Szczecin of the Hungarian paprika-seasoned stew called ''paprikás''. Although I must point out that, technically, ''paprikás'' must, by definition, contain sour cream; without sour cream, it is ''pörkölt''. And you should never confuse either of these with goulash; in Hungary this is a soup rather than a stew (its name comes from the Hungarian word ''gulyás'', or cattle herder, so it may be translated as “cowboy’s soup”). In any case, this is how PS2 got its name, "``Szczecin paprikash".
All in all, we can say that PS2 is a Polish mashup of Senegalese and Hungarian culinary traditions, which means that Szczecinians were doing extreme fusion cuisine before it was a thing! After the fall of communism, Polish far-sea fishing business became economically unsustainable and Gryf went bankrupt. But, as PS2 was never trademarked, it soon started to be produced all over Poland – often from freshwater fish. The labels often say vaguely that the spread contains “spices”, so there may be no paprika among its ingredients at all. Just like the Holy Roman Empire was, according to Voltaire, neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, so is today’s “Szczecin paprikash”, made neither in Szczecin, nor from paprika.
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File:Litkowal.jpg | The MT ''Likowal'', owned by PPDiUR Gryf, harvesting fish off the coast of Senegal in 1977
File:Litkowal Dakar.jpg | Crew of the MT ''Likowal'' in Dakar
I saw on YouTube that the way to serve ''ceebu jën'' is to place the fish on a&nbsp;bed of rice and surround it with the vegetables. And how does it taste? Let me just say this: it’s better than PS2.
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Ceebu jen 1.JPG
Ceebu jen 2.JPG