Some time ago, when I discovered I enjoyed cooking, I realised that the world knew precious little about Polish cuisine.  Some people believe that the very elements of traditional Polish... - for now, let me call it cooking, rather than cuisine - don't lend themselves to the subtle and airy embellisements which allow a cusine to become fine - c'est a dire, haute.  Tosh.  Remember that these are the types that still assiduously salt and drain aubergines.  These are the types that have a prancing fit on live TV when omelettes take on a brown colour.  I can't even get annoyed at them.  Anyway, if the UK can claim Chicken Tikka Masala and Balti dishes as part of its cuisine (and I wouldn't dispute the point), then..?  Obviously, there's that fatty, starchy, tasty and filling Polish peasant fare (which also finds some representation in these pages) but, just as other 'national' cuisines, Polish cuisine is evolving, and being taken to new and clever places by enterprising cooks who mix and blend ideas, just as cooks.. er.. do.  Perhaps you have to eat a plait of pork loin served with timbales of buckwheat, pearl barley and turmeric-fragranced rice to believe it.  Now that's a cuisine.

    Once I'd decided that it'd be a good idea to try and popularise some of the recipes I'd picked up from my family and travels, and maybe try and initiate some contacts with like-minded others, I looked on the Internet and discovered that I wasn't the first.  Good grief - there are other culinary Poles out there!  I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was, a little.  Dąbrowski founded an Italian legion, Piłsudski defeated the Red Army, Sikorski fought for Poland from abroad, but Kresiński wanted everybody to try his cucumber salad.  It's amazing and heartening to know I'm not alone in that aspiration.  Many of the fine sites which I'm pleased to provide links to are based in the US, which perhaps isn't surprising; there's much more of a 'critical mass' of Polish folks there than in most other places, after all.  But thanks to all of my forerunners and recipe popularisers, wherever you are.

    It's my hope eventually to have this site wholly devoted to Polish food.  Once I'd decided I was going to organise a webpage, the plan was that whenever we'd have anybody round to eat with my family and they'd enjoyed one of the Polish dishes we'd made, I'd tell them that I'd put the recipe up for all to use.  One day a friend asked me to put 'that delicious soup' up, too.  That soup, I realised, was one which was mainly the work of a culinary writer for a major UK newspaper which I had just amended a little.  What do do?  In its own right, it had nothing to do with Poland, except maybe the writer had once had some vodka.  Well, it was a great soup, and very unusual, and so I decided to include it, with acknowledgment.  Then, one day, someone asked for my wife's sausage casserole recipe to be included.  It's a very fine casserole, but this is sausage casserole, for goodness' sake!  I feel better now, and have decided to take my own advice about peasant food etc etc.  Whatever tastes good to us and others should find a place here - and that's why the Polish recipes are in amongst many others.  But this IS a Polish food site.  It IS.  And that sausage casserole recipe is coming.... er.. soon.  Recipe suggestions are gratefully received at [email protected] although, if your suggestion isn't included, don't be offended.  It doesn't mean I don't like it.  It's just that our 'testers' didn't ask for it.
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