Changes

{{cytat

| Bigos is one of those Polish dishes that has been romanticized in poetry, discussed in its most minute details in all sorts of literary contexts, and never made in small quantities. Historically, it was served at royal banquets or to guests at meals following a hunt. It was made invariably from several types of game and served during winter. Bigos has gradually assumed the character of a Christmas and Easter dish in Poland, and today recipes are as varied and as complex as any Italian recipe for tomato sauce. In fact, some Poles even add tomato sauce to the mixture. (It does not need it.)

}}

I'm sorry to report that etymologists agree: this epitome of Polish cuisine is referred to by a word of foreign, non-Slavic and – what's even worse – German origin! They are not certain, though, which German word exactly the Polish ''bigos'' derives from, but they have no doubt that some German word it is. Aleksander Brückner, a famous prewar scholar of Slavic languages, maintained that ''bigos'' comes from German ''Bleiguss'', or "lead mold". The idea was that if you pour molten lead on water (as many Poles still do with wax for divination on Saint Andrew's Eve), you're going to get a shape that resembles bigos. Other linguists are quite unanimous in their view that this etymology makes no God-damned sense.

== ''Minutal alias siekanka'' ==

| You may also douse wolf lungs with pure wine, then chop them up into bigos and cook with pepper, ginger, cloves, saffron; eat this for a few days. This has been tried on one wife.

| oryg = Może też, opłukawszy płuca wilcze winem czystym, potem je uwarzyć zsiekawszy na bigos i okorzenić pieprzem, imbirem, goździkami, szafranem, a to jeść przez kilka dni. Jest rzecz doświadczona na jednej białej głowie.

}}

There are two interesting things we can notice here: first, 16th-century requirements regarding sample sizes in clinical studies were a lot less strict thatn they are today. And second, it was possible to make bigos without cabbage or sauerkraut. You didn't need a variety of meats either. All you needed to do to make bigos was to chop something (say, wolf lungs) up and season to make it sour, sweet and spicy.

A 1621 Polish-Latin-Greek dictionary defines ''bigos'' simply as ''ferculum ex concisis carnibus'', or "a dish of chopped meat" and provides the word ''siekanka'' ("something chopped up") as a Polish synonym. It also gives ''minutal'' as the Latin equivalent. As it turns out, Poles were not the first to enjoy sweet-and-sour chopped-meat delicacies; there were already known to ancient Romans. We can find some recipes for minutal in ''De Re Coquinaria'' (''On the Subject of Cooking''), a cookbook that has been traditionally credtied to Apicius, but is in fact a collection of formulae from various authors compiled in the 4th–5th centuries CE. What follows is a recipe for ''minutal ex praecoquis'', or chopped pork with apricots.

[[File:Minutal.jpg|thumb|200px|A modern reconstruction of pork-and-apricot minutal]]

{{cytat

| Combine olive oil, fish sauce and diluted wine in a pot. Add chopped dried shallots and diced pork shoulder. Cook all this with crushed pepper, cumin, dried mint and dill. Add some honey, fish sauce [again], raisin wine, vinegar and broth. Mix well. Add stoned apricots and bring to boil again. Thicken with crushed flatbread, sprinkle with pepper and serve.

}}

{{cytat

| Take some good beef, roast it nicely, frequently dousing with butter. Once it roasts nicely, cut into sizeable chunks; chop up a large amount of onion and fry it in butter. Put this bigos and onion into a nice fish pan. Pour in a quart of wine, half a quart of wine vinegar and half a quart of malmsey. Add small and large raisins, a sliced lime, a handful of olives, a handful of sugar; add enough [crushed] pepper to make it well spicy, a few cloves, some peppercorns, diced fresh lemon and two spoons of fresh butter. Let it boil well in the pan, so that only a little sauce remains.

}}

{{cytat

| Buttery crêpe bigosek: fry some crêpes, cut them into squares, add wine, a little wine vinegar, sugar, small raisins, cinnamon and butter, and fry them in a pan.

| źródło = ''ibid.'', p. 173

}}

{{cytat

| <poem>A maid, who hastened some bigos to season,

Rushed to the pantry, wherein, for the reason

Bigos in mournig is a novelty, but

Don't you dare make an inkwell out of my butt!</poem>

}}

== Bigos them up! ==

Centuries later, Polish President Bronisław Komorowski (a historian by training) made a reference to this tradition in his famous speech to the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C.

[[File:Komorowski bigos.jpg|thumb|250px|President Bronisław Komorowski and his wife chopping some meat up]]

| There used to be three phases of arriving at a political decision in the Polish parliament. The first phase was that of presenting views. Everyone could present any opinion they wanted. Then came the grinding phase. Grinding as in a great mortar, where you grind until you produce a uniform mass. Opinions were ground through a long-term discussion. But if this didn't help and if at least one person remained unconvinced or opposed, then he could take the floor of the Polish parliament, shout, "liberum veto!" and scurry away – thus dissolving the parliament. So the Polish nobility came up with a third phase: it was the phase of making bigos. Bigos is a peculiar dish: shredded cabbage and chopped meat stewed for a long time. So the third phase – that of making bigos – meant that the rash nobles would grab their sabres and hack him to pieces, the one who upset the government, who upset the law, before he could get away.

}}

{{cytat

| Veal bigos for a starter: Take some veal or other butcher's meat, or some poultry or game; you may also mix various kinds, if you do not have enough of one kind; chop it up, put in a pot together with butter, parsley, onion, chopped shallots, put on a fire, add a pinch of flour, pour in half a glass of boullion and as much [meat] juice, salt, pepper, boil for a quarter, add some coulis [thick sauce of puréed vegetables]. Serve with fried croutons.

| oryg = Bigos z&nbsp;cielęciny na przydatek: Weź cielęciny lub innego mięsa jatkowego, albo też z&nbsp;drobiu lub ze zwierzyny pieczonej, możesz różne pomieszać, jeżeli jednego nie masz dosyć, usiekaj, włóż w&nbsp;rondel z&nbsp;masłem, pietruszką, cebulą, szalotką siekaną, przystaw do ognia, wsyp szczubeć mąki, wlej pół szklanki bulionu i&nbsp;tyleż soku, osól, opieprz, gotuj przez kwadrans, przydaj trochę gąszczu. Na wydaniu obłóż grzankami smażonymi.

}}

{{cytat

| Cut onions into thin slices, brown them in butter with flour, add some bouillon, bring to boil; then add precooked and diced carrots, parsnips, celeriacs and rutabagas; salt, pepper, add a little vinegar and serve with mustard.

| oryg = Cebule pokraj w&nbsp;zraziki, zrumień w&nbsp;maśle z&nbsp;mąką, zalej bulionem, dogotuj, wrzuć w&nbsp;to potem marchwi, pasternaków, selerów, brukwi wprzód gotowanej i&nbsp;krajanej, osól, opieprz, wlej odrobinę octu, na wydaniu przydaj musztardy.

}}

In my next post we're going to see how bigos – finally, with cabbage! – kept evolving beyond its Old Polish stage.

{{Nawigacja|poprz=Evading Crusading|nast=Epic Cooking: The Wondrous Taste of Bigos}}

[[pl:Prawdziwy staropolski bigos]]