How Do You Prepare A Traditional Polish Christmas Eve Dinner?
The menu for a traditional 12-course Polish Wigilia dinner served on Christmas Eve may vary, but it is always meatless and usually includes carp. Remember to fill your heart with good will and fast until the first star, Gwiazdka, appears in the sky. Collect family recipes, or find new ones in Polish cookbooks or on the Web. Check major book dealers, secondhand book shops, antique malls and flea markets for old Polish cookbooks, or link up to Polish bookshops through periodicals such as the “Polish-American Journal.” Plan a menu based on traditional foods, but adapt it to suit your personal tastes. Dishes customarily served include oplatek, a blessed bread representing communion; barshch, a vegetable stew; fish soup; herring; fish in aspic; carp; stewed cabbage or sauerkraut. Serve sweets such as the following: dried fruit; kutia, a treat made from wheat, poppy seed, honey and almonds; poppy seed or honey cakes or strudel; rolls or bread. Coffee, tea and cold drinks are standard beverag
