Podlachia Food & Traditional Cuisine

Podlachian cooking is the food of a poor, cold, forested borderland, and it draws on four traditions that lived side by side.

The Polish and Belarusian base is potato, rye, cabbage, pork, dairy and whatever the forest gives — mushrooms, berries, honey and game. The potato dishes here are more numerous and more specific than anywhere else in Poland, with named preparations that exist only in this region.

The Tatar inheritance contributes pastries and dumplings of Turkic origin, cooked with lamb, beef and goose rather than pork, and still made in Kruszyniany and Bohoniki.

The Orthodox calendar shapes the year with long fasting periods, which produced a substantial repertoire of meatless and dairy-free dishes — and the Jewish tradition, though its community is gone, left marks on the baking and on Bialystok’s most famous export, the bialy roll.

Everything is filling, and portions are generous.

Kartacze — also called cepeliny — are the regional emblem: large oval dumplings of grated and mashed potato stuffed with minced pork, boiled and served with fried bacon and onion or soured cream. Heavy, and the dish Podlachians name first.

Babka ziemniaczana, a baked grated-potato pudding with bacon and onion, and kiszka ziemniaczana, the same mixture packed into a sausage casing and baked — both are unique to this corner of Poland and Belarus.

Pierekaczewnik is the Tatar contribution and holds EU protected status: paper-thin layers of dough rolled around a filling of lamb, goose or curd cheese into a spiral and baked. Making it properly is a serious skill.

Sekacz, the tall spit-roasted layer cake with spiky projections, is baked over an open fire by rotating the batter, and is the wedding and Easter cake of the borderland.

Also: kolduny, small Tatar dumplings in broth; forest mushroom soups; kwas chlebowy, fermented bread drink; and Bialystok’s onion-topped bialy rolls.

Village homestays are where the region’s food is actually encountered. Agritourism guesthouses cook what they grow and gather, and a stay usually includes two meals of exactly the dishes described above.

Kruszyniany has a Tatar guesthouse that serves the full traditional repertoire by arrangement, and it is the reason a good many people make the drive out.

Bialystok’s market and the smaller town markets sell forest produce in season — mushrooms, bilberries, cranberries and honey, which is a serious regional product given the beekeeping tradition in the forest.

Fasting food: during Orthodox Lent and the Nativity fast, village kitchens cook without meat or dairy for weeks, and the dishes are worth asking about.

Mushroom picking from August to October is close to universal, and guesthouses will take guests along.

Portions are large and refusing a second helping takes persistence.

Podlachia is far too cold for wine, and its drinking traditions come from grain, honey and the forest.

Zubrowka is the region’s contribution to the world: rye vodka flavoured with a blade of hierochloe odorata, the bison grass that grows in the Bialowieza forest and which the bison eat. Each bottle traditionally contains a single blade. It has been made in Poland for centuries and is the most internationally recognised Polish spirit after plain vodka, usually drunk cold or with cloudy apple juice.

Mead has deep roots here, given the forest beekeeping tradition — hollowed-log hives were used in Bialowieza for centuries and the practice has been revived.

Nalewki made from forest fruit — rowan, sloe, bilberry, cranberry — are the domestic tradition and appear in every guesthouse.

Kwas, the lightly fermented rye bread drink, is the non-alcoholic staple and is genuinely refreshing.

Tatar households, being Muslim, traditionally do not drink, and their hospitality runs on tea instead.