Remembering it Polish

By: Lovingpeacefulmama
     FOOD food everywhere, and not a polish sausage around to spare…..
     A few weeks ago, my husband and I visited the Polish triangle in Boston.  It’s a very small part in Dorchester that has an area of restaurants and Food markets, polish delis, more importantly Polish donuts!!!  I’ve never had them, but man they look good and I LOVE DOUGHNUTS!!!  I guess the triangle has been here for years, but we’ve never heard or seen it for one reason or another…until we watched an episode of Chronicle talking about the Boston and its great Polish triangle.  Craving my grandmother’s stuffed cabbage, and my mother’s potato pancakes, we planned a whole date night around it.
     We went to a restaurant called Café Polonia. (at http://www.cafepolonia.com/)  We had stuffed cabbage (gwoomki I doubt the spelling is right) , potato pancakes, polish sausage (white Kielbasa), we skipped the Pierogi (polish ravioli), ….maybe next time.  
     We started our dinner with potato pancakes.  You can have them served with sour cream, apple sauce or Hungarian goulash.  We chose sour cream which is what my family always uses as a side.  They were DELICIOUS!!!!   Tasted just like my mother’s.  It was a good thing the main course came, otherwise we would have had to fight for the last one.    
     The stuffed cabbage came with our choice of homemade tomato sauce or mushroom sauce.  I chose the tomato sauce since that has always been the way my grandmother made it for our family for over 50 years.  They were GREAT!!!  The large rolled up cabbage rolls would have been enough for most people for dinner.  …that is if you weren’t Polish.  …if you’re Polish, you eat everything that’s on the table, even if you’re full…and then when you’ve really had enough, you get up walk around for five minutes, maybe have a couple of drinks, then go back for another feast.  Never underestimate the ability of a Pollock to eat and/or drink anyone under the table…even the smallest of us will out eat/drink the best contest eater.  
     I’ve been trying to eat at least one salad for dinner.  I ordered a side salad that might as well have been my whole dinner, since it was HUMUNGOUS!!!...needless to say the salad was not finished before we left.  I vowed I would eat more salad tomorrow.  
     The sausage was delicious also, can’t find white Polish sausage in most grocery stores in New England, so this was a real treat for me.
     The next time I go, I think I want to try the beet soup.  I couldn’t bring myself to when I was young, it looked too much like blood.
     The day after our visit to Boston, we tried to make the potato pancakes out of mashed potatoes and grilled onions….not my mother’s recipe.  Trying to make life easier at every step.  One fatal mistake was that I didn’t put flour in the recipe.  I’m gluten sensitive, so I’ve been experimenting with different ways to keep the wheat out of my food.  I know you can cook with potato flour, so I didn’t think any flour was needed since I was using potato’s to start with.   LOTSA BIG MISTAKES ALL AROUND!!!  The pancakes stuck to my pan no matter what I did.  ….I guess you could say my cooking is Polish in more ways than one….typical POLLOCK!!!  So we decided to bake them…guess what..????....they tasted GREAT!!!  I’m going to try it again and this time write down the recipe….ooops, I wonder if I’m ever going to get it back the way I made it the first time. Let me know if you want the recipe.  
     2 thumbs up for Café Polonia, Both Doug and I agreed that the potato pancakes were the best part of the meal.
     For more information about the Polish triangle you can go to:

http://www.wcvb.com/chronicle/happening-hoods-the-polish-triangle/28234078

LovingPeacefulMama is a mother of  a middle schooler.  She loves to write about her daily experiences with her family.  She also writes stories with her daughter, you can find them on facebook toothfairywisdom page

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