If you thought that Germans, Hungarians and Czechs are apt to get hot under the collar when expounding the merits of their respective sausage, goulash and dumplings, just try mentioning the word bigos to a Pole and you will see their eyes glaze over and their chest visibly heave with a protracted sigh. Forget about pierogi or borsch or even good old standby favorites like homemade tomato or mushroom soup: it's this heady fare that gets their glands secreting and their stomachs rolling in anticipation.
What might sound like simple pork and cabbage to the uninitiated, this 'Hunter's Stew' is a hearty concoction of spare ribs, loin chops, smoked butt and any other part of the porcine beast that comes to hand, all spiced up with pepper, onion, mushrooms and smoked kielbasa, stewed with cabbage and tossed up with tangy sauerkraut. As every practitioner of the art is aware, however, it is not these essentials that go to cast the spell but the selection and method and, most important of all, each cook's trusted ingredient added in secret to the recipe.
Originally exclusive to the swashbuckling aristocracy and at its very best a veritable feat of sustained preparation, truly authentic bigos is ideally brewed overnight in an ample cauldron and left to simmer and bubble as long as possible, even to the extent of several days. The longer it's cooked, the richer and more seductive the result. Happily, considering the amount of effort involved, it survives freezing and re-heating remarkably well, both only adding to its gusto.
According to Mike Oborski, Honorary Consul in the UK, "bigos has a strong and all-pervasive aroma that Poles find totally magnetic", which goes a long way to explain the irresistible hold of the average Polish mother's apron-strings, or the passionate longing for the homeland of the Polish diaspora living and working abroad. The stew has other alluring properties too. As poet laureate Adam Mickiewicz puts it in the Polish national epic, Pan Tadeusz, 'Bigos is no ordinary dish, for it is aptly framed to meet your wish'.
Having moved to Cracow for the first time two years ago, a roaming expatriate who soon tired of his girlfriend found himself coming back for more and more after he discovered she had saved her most enduring charm till the end. At the close of a long day, 'I have bigos' was all she needed to say. Gosia had competition, however, in the form of Asia, who, at strategically chosen moments, would appear with bulging tubs of perfectly seasoned bigos extracted from her mother's freezer like caskets of vintage wine from the cellar.
Not to be outdone, Basia entered the fray and almost swept the field with her seemingly unchallengable version of the brew. Armed with a potent spice provided by her mother and supplied with mouth-watering boar from the forest hunts of her father, the resulting bigos, concocted over a period of nights, was impossible to resist. These girls all lost out to latecomer, Magda, however, who soon uncapped her own mix of the potion. The expatriate, here unnamed for obvious reasons, is staying on in Cracow, where Magda's secret ingredient remains undivulged.
You can try bigos yourself by downloading the state-protected recipe from the Polish government website, at www.poland.gov.pl
What might sound like simple pork and cabbage to the uninitiated, this 'Hunter's Stew' is a hearty concoction of spare ribs, loin chops, smoked butt and any other part of the porcine beast that comes to hand, all spiced up with pepper, onion, mushrooms and smoked kielbasa, stewed with cabbage and tossed up with tangy sauerkraut. As every practitioner of the art is aware, however, it is not these essentials that go to cast the spell but the selection and method and, most important of all, each cook's trusted ingredient added in secret to the recipe.
Having moved to Cracow for the first time two years ago, a roaming expatriate who soon tired of his girlfriend found himself coming back for more and more after he discovered she had saved her most enduring charm till the end. At the close of a long day, 'I have bigos' was all she needed to say. Gosia had competition, however, in the form of Asia, who, at strategically chosen moments, would appear with bulging tubs of perfectly seasoned bigos extracted from her mother's freezer like caskets of vintage wine from the cellar.
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