- the other mainstay meat of Poland!

Carbonado    Foreigner in Terlingua     Ginger, Orange and Mango Meatballs     Piedmontese Beef      Slow-Cooked Stuffed Steaks

Carbonado (4)
- one of a couple of treats for those who love the combination of meats and fruit.  Don't be tempted to add even a touch of garlic to this version; it really benefits from simplicity of flavour.  Similarly, go easy on the salt - put it in the rice if you have to have it.  The choice of fresh or tinned peaches in the ingredients list isn't as 'obvious' as fresh being preferred over tinned; the two options give dishes which are rather different.  I can't decide which I prefer.

500 g ground beef
400 g tomatoes, fresh or tinned
50 g raisins
250 g peaches, fresh or tinned
1 medium onion
about 1/2 tsp salt
beef stock cube, crumbled
about 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp sugar (optional)

          Fry meat in its own juices, and remove from pan.  Skim off fat if desired.  Add chopped onion to pan and cook until soft.  Add tomatoes and peaches, if fresh, and stock cube, and stew on moderate heat for 5 minutes.  Return the beef to the pan and add raisins, and tomatoes and peaches if tinned.  Stew for a further 5 minutes, season with sugar, salt and pepper.  Good with saffron or turmeric-stained rice.
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Foreigner in Terlingua (4)
- oh yes, I can just see their faces at thhe Gran' Chile Cookoff.  There are numerous sins here: the use of 'inferior' red kidney bean as opposed to the esteemed Texas pinto bean, sweet bell pepper, parsley - there must be others.  So I'd go the whole hog and serve sour cream on the side.  It's a good way to go.  It'd be disappointing if, after doing this with a straight face, you just got run out of town.  Make it hot.

450 g ground beef
2 tbsp raisins or sultanas
1 medium onion
1/4 green bell pepper
1 clove garlic, mashed
200 ml tomato juice
400 g cooked red kidney beans (about a tin)
1 tsp cornflour
1 tbsp dried parsley
3 or 4 dried apricots
hot chile powder, 1/2 tsp or to taste
salt

          Dry-fry the beef, chopped onion and chopped pepper with 1 tsp salt until the juices flow.  Cover and stew gently until beef is browned.  Add garlic and chile powder, half of the tomato juice, the raisins and apricots, cut into strips.  Simmer for 10 minutes, then add cornflour beaten into the remaining tomato juice.  Heat through to thicken, add beans and parsley, and heat through.  Serve with rice.
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Ginger, Orange and Mango Meatballs (4)
- this is so simple.  You may not bellieve me, but this started off as the traditional Polish 'Klopsy' recipe which incorporated green pepper (I always thought the tastes combined) followed by ginger, which was just an experiment, followed by mango powder (which stood in once when we were short of ginger).  The resulting meatballs are historically Pol-fusion, but really taste a lot better with Chinese noodles greased with a little sesame oil, than the spuds or rice I might ordinarily have to serve them with.  The final thing looks and tastes a bit Australasian.  Can I put a Polish flag there?  Hmmm...  No.  Most countries have meatballs.  Fair's fair, I claimed leczo and advocaat as Polish, so I guess I'd better give way this time.  I normally serve this with the noodles and a lightly-oiled stir-fry of something like mangetout, leeks, onion, carrot, mushroom, garlic...  No ginger, mind, in the stir-fry - so, if any enterprising Pol-fusion souls out there want to get traditional Polish vegetables and flash-fry them, give me your recipe, and I can plant a Polish flag proudly by even this one.  Come to think of it, maybe I will...  You may have to go to a shop catering for Bengalis or Sri Lankans to get the mango powder ('amchoor'), although I am prepared to be put right on even this.  You can do without it, or course - just add a little extra ginger, or a dash of apple juice etc etc etc.

500 g ground beef
1/8 green pepper
1 medium onion
1 orange
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp mango powder

          Chop onion and pepper as finely as you can and put in a bowl with the gound beef.  Knead and form into balls the size of walnuts, placing them separately on a floured plate.  Shallow-fat fry in oil or poultry fat for about 3 minutes on each of, say, 4 turnings, which might take 15-18 minutes or so.  It's hard to overcook these except that the outside might get too hard.  If in doubt, take one meatball out and cut in half.  If they're still pink inside, put the halves back to cook.  Otherwise, if the inside's brown, do as you like.  Serve with noodles and a stir-fry of your liking.
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Piedmontese Beef (4)
- farmhouse food.  Veal & sage iss a common combination in Italian cuisine, but beef and sage are great together, too.  This dish should be redolent of the herbs and garlic and smokiness of the bacon, but it can be quite salty on account of the latter and the concentration process at the end of cooking.  Never add any extra salt until the end and, if you dislike salty dishes, you can first boil the bacon in a little water from cold, and retain the water in case you need it later.  Lastly, a word on the meat combination: you might wonder why I specify lean beef but ruin it all by using fatty bacon (streaky bacon is great).  Well, this is the way they do it in Piedmont, presumably because it's just the nature of the fat on each of these beasts.  Pork fat is rich and melting, and can help release the garlic's aromas, whilst beef fat is more leathery, and just about tolerable in a well-marbled joint, just so it stays moist.  It's no accident that rural farm families in Britain used to kill lean cattle, yet fat pigs, for their own consumption.  Trust me, if you try this with lean bacon, the result isn't half as good.  If you try it with fatty beef and lean bacon, the result will be downright bad.

250 g smoked fatty bacon
200 g unsmoked lean bacon
1 large onion
400 ml red wine
5 cloves garlic, whole and unpeeled if you wish
2 tbsp tomato puree
1000 g beef, not necessarily the best cut, but very lean
2 bay leaves
1 generous sprig sage, or 1 tsp dried sage
tsp cornflour
tsp olive oil
pepper and, if desired, salt

          If whole, cut the bacon into small chunks so as to keep some fat and some lean meat on each piece.  If sliced, cut it into lardons.  Add oil and fry, slowly at first but then quite strongly.  Meanwhile, chop onion and, when the meat begins to brown, add onion, stir, and turn heat down to moderate.  Dice beef.  After 10 minutes or so, raise heat again, and add puree, herbs, garlic, beef, and most of the wine.  Cover pot and stew slowly for several hours until the beef is very tender.  Keep tasting sauce.  Towards the end of the cooking time, uncover and reduce liquid until thick enough for pasta, yet not too salty.  Adjustments can be made at the last minute using the remaining wine, with cornflour (to thicken sauce) or without (to mollify saltiness).  Serve with a fine pasta or noodles.
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Zrazy Wołowe (6)
- I've seen this dish called 'Zawijanki' iin the Poznan region, and 'Rolada' in the south.  If there's a difference between these dishes, it's lost on me.  However, this is spectacularly melt-in-the-mouth, and exceedingly lean if you trim the meat well and omit the cream.  If you can, buy the sort of gherkin or dill pickled cucumber that is mild, as opposed to sharp.  Best of all are traditional soured (kiszone) cucumbers. Similarly, buy the best smoked ham you can get, such as Sopocka.

1000 g beef silverside
several slices lean smoked ham - about 50 g
2 gherkins or soured cucumbers
a little pickling fluid from gherkins
1 large onion
mild mustard
oil
100 ml double cream
salt
ground black pepper

          Cut the beef into steaks about 1 cm thick (preferably against the grain) and trim well of fat.  Tenderise carefully and spread each steak thinly with mustard, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Chop onion and gherkins into strips and pack a strip of each into each steak, along with a slice of ham, making sure all three contact the beef. Roll the beef up around the stuffing, securing each steak with a wooden cocktail stick or metal meat pin.  Allow to stand in a cool place for up to a day to marinate. Finely chop remaining gherkin. About 2 hours before eating, pack an oiled lidded pot with the steaks, add the chopped gherkin and onion, and drizzle with a little more oil and any meat juices released. Cover and cook on a very low heat, barely enough to boil the released juices, for at least 2 hours. Once cooked, take the steaks out and allow to relax slightly. Taste meat juices in pan and season to taste with gherkin juice, salt, pepper, and cream. Serve steaks in a pretty dish, topped with sauce.

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