Barbara Walch

Click on each dish for the recipe.

On the weekend, I love spending time outdoors—taking a long walk with a friend, playing a round of golf, or just sitting out on my back patio reading a book. But when the weather won’t cooperate, which it hasn’t much this winter in North Texas, you can usually find me at one of my favorite hangouts, the bookstore. I can spend hours there, moving from one section to the next. But it will probably come as no surprise that most of my time ends up being spent in the cookbook section.

I have a rather large cookbook collection with books dedicated to just about every type of cuisine or cooking technique. So when I spotted a book on Polish cooking I was pleasantly surprised. In the over 30 years I’ve been a collector, I have found very few dedicated to the food of my Polish heritage.

Both of my grandfathers were immigrants—one from Great Britain and the other from Poland. Sadly, I never knew my British grandfather, who died when my father was just 7 years old. But my Polish grandfather (who we called Dziadzi) and my grandmother (who we called Busia) played a major role in my life growing up in Michigan. As their only granddaughter, I guess you could say I was more than a little spoiled, although I like to think in a good way.

Staying with my grandparents was always a treat for me, and I did it as often as I could. You could tell they loved cooking for us; it was their way of showing love for family. For breakfast, Dziadzi would prepare homemade crepes (nalesniki), delicate thin pancakes that he would spread with fruit preserves and roll up for us to eat. They can also be filled with a sweet cheese mixture and served with a fresh fruit sauce for a dessert. For lunch, I would enjoy a steaming bowl of homemade chicken and kluski noodle soup Busia had prepared, or a sandwich with imported ham and cheese on rye bread fresh from the bakery.

There were times I would accompany Busia to her job so she could show me off to her co-workers. That was typically followed by a shopping trip on Michigan Avenue. (Hey, a girl can’t have too many shoes.) Then it was back home to join Dziadzi for a dinner of stuffed cabbage (golombki), sausage and sauerkraut (kielbasa and kapusta), or the Polish version of ravioli (pierogi) which can be stuffed with an assortment of savory or sweet fillings.

The pierogi my grandparents made were filled with either a dry farmer’s cheese, a combination of mashed potato and cheese, or kapusta. They would lightly sauté the pierogi in butter and serve them with a dollop of sour cream on the side. But mostly I remember them making lazy pierogi (leniwe pierogi) which is more like a dumpling where the cheese is incorporated into the dough, rolled out, and then cut into diamond shapes for cooking.

For a sweet treat, one of my favorites was what we called “angel wings” (chrusciki), also called Polish crullers, which are deep fried rectangles of dough dusted generously with powdered sugar. I also loved freshly made donuts (paczki) that had no hole in the middle and were filled with fruit jam or custard.

There were some sweets I only remember having at the holidays, like Easter, when my grandmother’s friend Eva would bring us homemade coffee cakes (babka). Her babka was so loved by all of us my mother eventually asked Eva to teach her how to make them. After Eva passed away, my mother became the babka queen for many years, making the traditional Easter sweet bread for our family.

Cheesecake (sernik) is also very popular in Polish cuisine and there are as many recipes for it as there are Polish cooks. And no Easter buffet would be complete without sweet poppy seed cake (makowiec) or jam crescent cookies (rogaliki).

 I still enjoy the foods from my childhood. It’s comfort food to me. When I go back to Michigan to visit every year, my mother makes sure I get my fill. And when I don’t have time to prepare it myself at home, I’ve found a jewel of a Polish restaurant right here in Plano, For You–European Café and Delicatessen at Parker and Alma that also sells imported food products. Anna Ziolkowski, the restaurant’s chef and mother of the café’s owner, Alexandra Torres, came to Texas from Warsaw in 1991. All the food is handmade and authentic, and Anna even talked me into sampling her meat stuffed pierogi one day. It was delicious!

To learn more about Polish cuisine, I would highly recommend the latest addition to my cookbook collection, The New Polish Cuisine by Chef Michael J. Baruch (LBCM Publishing). It’s a beautiful book filled with traditional favorites as well as updated classics.

Smacznego! Eat well.