Shopping list for Wigilia / Christmas Eve

Everyone in Poland is getting down to some serious Wigilia preparations for the most important day of they year for us Poles – Christmas Eve! And it’s all about family getting together, the first star in the sky, presents… but most importantly the amazing food!

So if you fancy a taste of a Polish Christmas, here’s your shopping list (find the nearest shop to you now!) :

start off with the sledzie (pickled herring) with onions – yum – amazing with some good old polish rye bread and butter
obligatory pierogi/dumplings (you can make them, that’s a fun evening of dumpling sticking, rolling and filling!) – look for ‘kapusta z grzybami’ ones (mushrooms + cabbage) – you can then fry them off in some olive oil…. yum!
make it healthy with a very traditional and tasty Polish cooked veg salad – pick it up in the shop or make it yourself (a night of choppping!) with cooked carrots and parsnips, apples, onions, peas and some mayo/yoghurt
Karp/carp – ah this is the most amazing fish, fatty and delicious, you slice it into lovely big chunks, then roll it in flour + egg and fry them off – AMAZING!
barszcz/ beetroot soup – you can buy the juice in the shop, and drop some bits of beetroot in it + pepper and warm it up to eat
‘uszka’ (ears!) – similar to the dumplings, just curled into a smaller ring of dumpling so that you can pop 4 or so of them in the barszcz soup (in the olden days, you could put an engagement ring in one of these…. better not eat it tho!!)
once all the savoury treats are done, it’s time for the cakes – you local shop should be full of the traditional delicacies like makowiec (poppy seed roll), sernik (cheesecake) and piernik (honey loaf cake)… you can of course make a cheesecake yourself (our Polish one is a baked variety) …. .nothing beats home made cakes …. my nan’s piernik is to die for 🙂 and the longer you keep it the nicer it gets!
to wash it all down with, you can opt for some wine or vodka…. but make it ultra digestive-friendly and buy or make some dried fruit Kompot (juice). Simply pick up a dried fruit mix in the polish shop – with dried plums, pears, apples and add some cinnamon sticks and boil it for a good while to get the flavour…. you can also keep re-heating this throughout Xmas if you make a huge couldron of it!

Your shopping list is ready…. happy shopping!!

Here’s some pics to whet your appetite…. yummm!! 2 days to go!!!