Dive into Polish food
In the cold of winter, it’s a good moment to look for some stick-to-your ribs hearty food.
Part of my background is Polish, and I never realized how influenced you are by your taste genes until I wound up with my husband on a business trip in Mississauga. We had landed in Little Poland, and we wound up eating all of our meals in Polish restaurants and smacking our lips. We just could not get enough of the flavors.
When I returned and tried to find those kind of dishes here, I couldn’t. In Montreal, the restaurants that are Polish-like are more North Americanized for the Canadian palate. I keep pining for the tastes I found there, so I have rounded up a grocery/café that comes closest and two bakeries for some traditional desserts.
The other odd Polish connection is that I don’t bake a lot, but I have one favorite – a much admired and requested dessert recipe for New York Cheesecake. It wasn’t until I walked into Rosemont Bakery that I realized that cheesecake is a staple of a Polish bakery – my taste buds had searched for their roots and found them.
Battory Euro-Deli, 115 St.Viateur Ave. West at St. Urbain St. Phone: 514-948-2161. Hours: Tuesday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday and Friday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. If you have a hankering for hearty Polish delicacies, head over here for the national dish of bigos, and then have some kielbasa and throw in those pierogi stuffed with meat, cheese and potato, cabbage and mushrooms or blueberry. You can buy them cooked to eat on the spot or take them home frozen by the bag. For the winter you can stoke up on some hearty soups in the café. See if you can survive tripe (cow’s stomach) soup or go for the popular Ukrainian borscht (a vegetable soup with beets), clear borsht (just beets), spinach soup or “zurek”, a sour soup with sausage. Stuffed cabbage is on the menu, so are potato pancakes and stuffed crepes – meat or mushroom with cabbage. Cold cuts can be bought too, along with groceries: Winiary dried soups, Tenczywek plum butter, Develey mustard or Kamis and Prymott gravy, Tymbark soda, dumpling mix, horseradish cream, sour cherry syrup and six kinds of sauerkraut or mustards. For dessert look at the counter for cheese, poppy and apple strudel. Prices would please starving artists.
Rosemont Bakery, 2894 Rosemont Blvd. at 6th Avenue. Phone: 514-728-7711. Hours: Tuesday and Wednesday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Your basic Polish bakery staples are sold by this bakery to many charcuteries and family tables around town. The trays of apple cake come in sweet or not-so-sweet, and there are trays of cheesecake (regular, chocolate on top or peach) and cherry cake. The machovietz loaf has poppy seeds and chocolate on top, and the piernik is a honey cake, while the babka comes in marble or fruit. Donuts are famous in Polish bakeries, so these paczek come with plums inside, vanilla cream or strawberry. The hearty breads are black bread, regular rye and round ryes that have no yeast. To put between the bread slices, there’s country sausage, ham sausage and Polish ham. Some staples fill the wall – Winiary and Prymat sauces, thick “beety” horseradish, candy, Placki mixes, Tymbark juices (carrot, cherry, white grape) and don’t leave without the sour pickles from the fridge.
Patisserie Danka, 15450 Pierrefonds Blvd. at Jacques Bizard. Phone: 514-620-1253. Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday and Friday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. A Polish bakery on the West Island is a find. Very traditional babkas, chocolate babkas, cheesecakes (raisins, chocolate covered or poppy seed) and apple cakes are lined up. Authentic strudels in poppy seed, chocolate, vanilla, walnut, lemon and orange are baked, and stefanka, the 7-layer cake, is here along with honey cake made with cream or plums. Roulades come in chocolate or mocha, vanilla and walnut, and you can buy meringues or rum balls. “Drajdushka” are a kind of a brioche with raisins, and those delectable plum donuts are here if you get in early enough. Some groceries (cookies, candies, jams, teas, syrups) and a few videos line the shelves.