Kielbasa

Inspirations for today’s post: family culture and a recent dinner at Polish Villa. Kielbasa… a Polish sausage that I could not live without. Having grown up with homemade and Redlinski’s versions, there are not many places that can do it right. Hillshire Farms? Don’t waste my time. Not. Even. Close.

Years went by until Don and I were let in on the secret existence of an amazing meat haven, Quaker Creek Store in Pine Island, NY. You would drive right by it if you didn’t know any better; it’s basically a convenient store and deli that happens to make and sell its own meats. As far as we’re concerned, Bobby Matuwszewski is a sausage deity. His kielbasa rivals that which my grandmother made and sold; if she liked it, it HAS to be nothing short of incredible. My parents are known to stock up and take a cooler full back to Buffalo. Sure they have Mexican chorizo, Italian sausage, Cajun andouille, German bratwurst and maple breakfast sausages, and even my beloved “TV snacks” (cabanossi), but it’s all about the kielbasa. So in an effort to further expose our family and friends to unique culinary treasures, we try to make Quaker Creek’s delicacies part of our social gatherings. Whether it’s just grilled kielbasa with beer mustard or a ‘basy dog at a cookout, their meats are always a hit. And if it's good enough for Tyler Florence and Anthony Bourdain, well... enough said.

Quaker Creek Store 

The only other kielbasa that ever came close was not even Polish. A random posting in the newspaper community calendar led us over 30 minutes away to the Ukrainian Society camp in Ellenville. Made fresh and brought in from Brooklyn, their kielbasa was a bit thicker than its Polish cousin, but every bit as delicious and utterly impressive to family members.

I remember Nan and Pop and various other relatives gathering together to grind, stuff and smoke their own kielbasa. A recipe does exist in the family “files,” so maybe someday we’ll make our own. Hopefully it will measure up. Na zdrowie!

Runs in the Family

So, now I know where it all comes from. The whole foodographic memory, that is. We were enjoying the fine Polish cuisine of the Polish Villa in honor of Nan. Pierogi, kielbasa, potato pancakes... the only thing missing was the kiszka (thank goodness!). As we were analyzing the smoked kielbasa, Mom pegged the maker of that particular sausage. She noticed the fine grind of the meat and very mild seasoning. Amazing.

The Broadway Market

A Buffalo icon, the Broadway Market was THE place to get all of your fresh, homemade foods. Meat, baked goods, candy, horseradish, fish, flowers… you name it. The Broadway Market had it all. I use the past tense because while the building is still there and it is still in operation, it’s not the same market it used to be.

Steeped in old world Eastern European tradition, the Broadway Market was not just a shopping center, it was a cultural and social Mecca as well. Since Nan worked there- at Redlinski’s Meats- for what was probably close to 50 years, we had really close ties to the Market. You could buy pretty much anything there and I’m pretty sure Nan did. Redlinski’s sold anything meat. Not just kielbasa, but hot dogs, cold cuts, sausage and more. For an indulgent high-sodium treat, we’d opt for “TV snacks” as Nan called them. Later on, I found they had a real name: cabanossi. Whatever they were called, they were meaty, salty and completely addictive. Whenever anything came home from Redlinski’s, it was wrapped in the classic white butcher paper, taped with masking tape, and placed in their iconic red, white and blue plastic bag.

The Broadway Market teemed with Polish favorites. You could get placek, chrusciki (angel wings), and pastry hearts (elephant ears) from the bakeries. Fish for Christmas Eve dinner was, of course, from here. So were the mushrooms for the soup. They even have their own “famous” horseradish for your beef on weck. Easter time was really special thanks to the presence of the butter lamb. This Polish Easter classic was blessed in the Easter basket along with the rest of the meal fixings and graced our table every year. For those who don’t know, it’s a chunk of butter molded into the shape of a lamb. It has cloves for eyes, a red ribbon around its neck and a flag-on-a-toothpick sticking up from its tail. The best things about the butter lamb were being the first to start hacking into it and then seeing its poor shrinking little body amount to a head on a plate. (You always started at its hind quarters for some reason. Chopping its head off first seemed a little cruel.) 

Can't find the real deal down here, so this is the next best thing! (And it doesn't go bad...)

I’m sad to know that the Broadway Market is not the market I knew growing up. Fortunately, I found an amazing sausage purveyor in Orange County NY’s Black Region Dirt. Quaker Creek does it just like Paul Redlinski did all those years, but more detail will follow in a future post. Until then, thanks for the foodographic memories Broadway Market!

Polish Christmas

Christmas Eve always meant heading to my grandparents’ house in the Kaisertown neighborhood of Buffalo. We’d pile into the car, get to church early, and get a seat close to the back door so we could beat traffic out of the parking lot. Then it was a beeline to Nana and Poppa’s for dinner. Of course, being Buffalo, it was always cold. Often exceptionally so on Christmas Eve for some reason. However, their house was always toasty warm. All that cooking certainly helped. The oven and stove top were packed full of Polish goodness. If there were two stoves, they would have both been stuffed to capacity.

During my early years, the dinner crowd was quite extensive and included my great-grandmother (babci), great aunts and uncles, and various generations of cousins on my mother’s side. Many a folding chair made an appearance down the center of the “parlor.” Eventually it became a more intimate affair with just my parents, sister, grandmother and me, but I’m pretty sure we had just as much food for the five of us as we did for fifteen!

Polish Christmas Eve dinner fare, while not exactly the healthiest foods, is ridiculously comforting. Fish, pierogi, sauerkraut and mushroom soup are the staples. The fish and pierogi were fried, thus adding to their appeal. In fact, there was so much frying that I don’t recall a year when the smoke detector didn’t go off! Can you fry sauerkraut? Or soup? I’m pretty sure you can and my grandmother must have managed to find a way.

Back to the mushroom soup. Ask Don. It warrants its own paragraph. My mom grew up with this tradition and she never ate the soup. My sister and I never ate the soup. My dad, who married into the family, actually eats the soup. Before Don came with me for his first Christmas with my family, mom called to ask if he liked mushroom soup. Sure he did. What a weird question, he thought. Well, he never had Polish mushroom soup. To hear him tell the “story of the mushroom soup” never gets old. He never knew there would be specially imported mushrooms “the size of trees” in the soup. Not only that, he was basically bullied into adding heaping piles of mashed potatoes and sour cream to his bowl. “That’s the way we do it,” said Nan. So he did it, noticing that other than Nan, none of the other blood relatives ate the soup. Sucker! My sister’s boyfriend at the time didn’t eat the soup. Needless to say, he’s no longer in the picture. Hmmm… Eat the soup, welcome to the family!

It has been years since we’ve had the truly traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner. Nan kept up hosting duties for quite a while, even after Poppa died. Lately, my mom is continuing the tradition. She learned to make pierogi and passed the recipe along to me. However, I have yet to actually make them myself. There is a lot of history behind those pierogi and I don’t want to disappoint. Besides, I don’t have a smoke detector in my kitchen.