Have you taken the pickle pill? Pickles and the liquid in which they often come are proliferating across western cuisine. They have been praised for their health qualities, with gut-pleasing, sodium-rich pickle juice becoming a post-workout favourite in Britain and America. It’s even being incorporated into cocktails and beer. ‘Putting a pickle in cheap beer makes it taste better’ claims one food website in what may or may not be a prank on its readership.
If your friend is organised and generous, you may find a jar of pickled peppers or pickled mushrooms
A fad? To some extent, I’m sure. But in Poland, where I live, the qualities of pickles will come as no surprise. They could hardly come into fashion in a country where they’ve never been out of style. Poles, like other Slavs, have a deep cultural relationship with pickling. Once, you had to pickle food if you didn’t want to be malnourished in the winter. Pickling was something of a social ritual, with cabbages being peeled, cut and salted en masse. Polish basements still heave with more jars of vegetables than a rich old English alcoholic’s cellar does with wine.
Poles love their pickled cucumbers. But there are also pickled mushrooms, pickled cabbage, pickled peppers, pickled beetroot and pickled carrot. One popular soup, Żurek, is made of fermented rye flour. Such pickles can be side dishes in a main meal. But they are also snack food and often an accompaniment to alcohol.
And here I must pull up a chair and have an earnest conversation with my British readers. Gather round. For all that the cultural disdain for British food is undeserved, there is one area in which it is largely merited. For years, British drinking has been trapped in the grasp of a tyranny of crisps. Go out to the pub, or round to your friend’s house, and you’ll find nothing else to add ballast to your booze – just crisps, stretching out as far as the eye can see. Even nuts are getting close to being considered exotic.
Crisps are great, of course – an excellent complement to alcohol with their combination of salt and crunchiness. But why limit ourselves? Why not have a little more imagination? Go out drinking vodka at a Polish friend’s house and you’ll find a bag of crisps, I’m sure. You might find a bag of paluszki – thin breadsticks, studded with salt. But you are also liable to find a plate of pickled cucumbers – offering the same riches of taste and texture, as well as electrolytes to take the edge off a hangover.
If your friend is organised and generous, you may find a jar of pickled peppers or pickled mushrooms as well. You don’t want to be too pernickety here, of course. You’re drinking vodka, not at a wine tasting. The last thing I’d want to do is gentrify the good old-fashioned art of drinking shots until your eyes roll 360 degrees. But a little variety – and some refreshing nutrients – stop the night from sinking into a depressive slump.
But why stop there? In southern Poland, where I live, we are very keen on Oscypek – a smoked cheese made of salted sheep’s milk. As well as being delicious, it’s good for a night of heavy drinking because the fat lines your stomach without being creamy enough to make you feel nauseous. (Try it hot with a bit of cranberry jam as well – in the Polish mountains, naturally.)
I’m a vegetarian but it would be dishonest of me not to mention herring – like writing an article about British cuisine without mentioning the word ‘chips’ or Italian food without mentioning the word ‘sensitive’. Herring is such a popular companion for vodka that there is a chain of bars called Ministerstwo Śledzia i Wódki – the Ministry of Herring and Vodka. I’m not entirely sure what the appeal is here, though I assume the oil is good at slowing the absorption of the booze. And perhaps herring is also just delicious.
Faddish as the kids’ strange enthusiasm for pickles might turn out to be, I hope that Brits will get more experimental with their snacks. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go and buy some paluszki and some pickled cucumbers for a night drinking with my friend Oskar – a sophisticated evening of intelligent discourse, in a garage, with a lot of vodka.
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