| WHY POLISH EASTER? As with most Eastern Europeans, Poles take Easter eating seriously.
WHAT TREATS CAN BE FOUND? Chocolate and painted eggs, special smoked sausages, cakes and breads.
WHEN ARE THESE EATEN? On Easter Sunday after food is blessed at church. If you can wait that long.
WHAT'S HAPPY EASTER IN POLISH? WesBych Zwiat Wielkanocnych. Well, you asked.
European Taste Delicatessen
As the door opens into this tucked-away treasure-trove, a blast of glorious aromas hits - the garlicky smokiness of excellent hams, sausages and other artisan-cured meats (from $20 a kilogram), yeasty rye bread ($5) and rummy, plummy, liqueur-filled chocolates ($23 a kilogram). Amid the cluster of tins, jars and packets above the smallgoods cabinet are cute, cellophane-wrapped figurines - paschal lambs in chocolate and sugar ($15). These fit into the decorated "blessing basket" or swieconka carried to Polish church on Easter morning.
Other basket fillers include eggs, dyed and intricately hand-decorated ($3), white pork sausage (bialy kielbasa), bread, salt and pepper or horseradish in pretty jars. Among the imported eggs are rainbow-hued real eggshells filled with truffle paste ($5). Home-dying kits are also sold. Come Easter week, in-store smells will include the citrusy vanilla of locally baked babka ($12), fruit-flecked domes of sweet, yeast cake. Owners Magdalena Maciejak and her husband, Jerzy, are from Poland but the happily helpful gang behind the counter covers several nationalities including Russian and Swedish, so European Easter alternatives abound.
19 Hill Street, Roseville, 9884 8055.
Eastern tastes … Jerzy and Magdalena Maciejak.
Photo: Marco del Grande |
Na Zdrowie
Polish might not have been trendy last time you looked but, if European food fads are anything to go by, vodka, bigos and barszcz are coming into their own. For an explanation, and tasting, of these and other specialties, do dinner at this eatery on Glebe's multi-culinary eating strip. With the biggest feast day on the Polish calendar drawing nigh, Na Zdrowie's owner and chef, Arek Kwasines, has begun hanging the walls with paper decorations and filling Easter baskets with the painted eggs known as pysanki.
Zurek, a tangy, sour-bread-based soup, is always on the menu but is an Easter favourite. From Easter Saturday, there's an extra menu of festive specialties including a creamy white potato borsch (or barszcz in Polish, $9.90). Other starters include an "Easter basket" platter of stuffed eggs, smoked ham and a country-style salad served with Polish rye ($14.90). Pork sausage or kielbasa is served boiled or fried with horseradish and beetroot ($22.90) - more typical Easter fare. And for a sugar fix Polish-style, try a slice of citrusy, raisiny babka or mazurek ($9.90), a colourfully iced flat pastry cake.
161 Glebe Point Road, Glebe, 9660 1242.
Read o story about this restaurant published in Puls Polonii near a year ago
Topsmak
Polish Sydneysiders have a few secret supply sources. This busy bakery is one. Anna Szwaja produces all the popular Polish cakes, mostly for wholesale to delis around town but also for private orders. Her husband, Zbignew, takes care of the bread side of the business. With the big feast day on the horizon, the Szwajas' range expands from glazed, jam-filled Polish doughnuts (paczki, $1.70 each), cheesecakes and strudels (from $17/kg upwards).
Easter Sunday specialties include babka, or babi as Szwaja calls them, and mazurek spread with chocolate and nuts. Makowce, a poppy seed pound cake, is also eaten at this time of year. It's best to order ahead. The shop is open to the public only on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 3pm to 8pm.
Unit 13/72 Orange Grove Road, Liverpool, 9600 7317
żródło: SMH Good Living
jsavill@access.fairfax.com.au | 
