Changes

When it comes to Szczecin – or western Polish borderlands in general – it’s difficult to speak of any long-held culinary traditions. The Germans took with them any local traditions that might have been here prior to World War 2 – either to western Germany or to mass graves. The territories vacated by the expelled Germans and annexed by Poland in 1945 were then resettled by people from Poland’s eastern borderlands that had been ceded to the Soviet Union. This way Poland literally shifted westwards and old recipes brought from Poland’s former East became the foundation for a new culinary culture in Poland’s new West. In Szczecin, people built atop this foundation, adding such novelties as Soviet army inventions, exotic recipes brought by sailors and fishermen from overseas, and – more recently – attempts at reconstructing old German local specialties specialities (such as the Stettin gingerbread).

Instead of searching by the name, let’s try to search by ingredients. Is there a West African dish made from rice, fish, tomato paste and hot spices? Yes, it turns out there is! It’s the national dish of Senegal, also popular in other West African countries, which goes by the name spelled ''ceebu jën'' in Wolof and ''thiéboudienne'' in French; it’s pronounced roughly ''cheh-<small>BOO</small>-djen'' and means simply “rice with fish”. To make it, you take an Atlantic fish called dusky grouper, cut it into steaks and stuff each one with finely chopped parsley, onion and garlic. Then you sauté vegetables (onion, chili pepper, potatoes, African eggplant, okra) with tomato paste and possibly a dried sea snail called ''Cymbium olla'' (also known as “Senegalese camembert” Camembert” due it its pungent smell). Then you add water and cook the fish steaks in this soup. Once it’s cooked, you remove the fish and the veggies from the pot and replace them with some rice to let it absorb all of the broth. The fish and the veggies are served on the rice.