Bolton has recently been commended for its ethnic inclusion strategy, which is nice to hear. It still has to address gang culture, drugs, homelessness and several other areas but at least different minorities are getting on quite well. As one celebration, the council runs a World Food Fair at Bishop Bridgeman school a couple of times a year. For the last one we were approached and asked if we’d like to contribute anything.
‘Sure,’ we said, ‘We can do something traditionally Polish, no problem.’
But then we were told it must be something cold, as health and safety won’t let us use any kind of heater on the stall, and it must be vegetarian. During the day, one young Asian lad asked Agnieszka if the salad we’d made was halal, without realising how much angst went in to actually making something without meat.
Because Polish food is heavy on the meat. Who cares what kind as long as it’s dead: kiełbasa, parówki, schab, szynka, indyk or kurczak. Practically every meal contains some sort of meat. Although that made it difficult, what made it almost impossible was the ‘cold’ criterion. Salad was all we could think of. In November.
Finally Agnieszka hit on her vegetable salad and we made that, along with one of celeriac, pineapple and sweetcorn. Both went down really well, except in the case of one little girl who tasted and then, very slowly, let it re-emerge from her mouth. The offending mouthful of salad was deftly caught and hidden by her dad, who looked sheepishly at us but grinned when he saw us smiling.
People seemed to like the salad, were confused about where Poland was, but on the whole everything went well. It was a shame the weather was crap, lots of rain and wind, as this affected the turnout. It would’ve also been nice to see more variety as, after the last one, we got the feeling it would be all the same faces at every one of these gatherings. We’ll miss the next one unfortunately, being in Poland when it’s on, but I am sure we’ll get another chance to show the world some ‘Polish kitchen’.
‘Sure,’ we said, ‘We can do something traditionally Polish, no problem.’
But then we were told it must be something cold, as health and safety won’t let us use any kind of heater on the stall, and it must be vegetarian. During the day, one young Asian lad asked Agnieszka if the salad we’d made was halal, without realising how much angst went in to actually making something without meat.
Because Polish food is heavy on the meat. Who cares what kind as long as it’s dead: kiełbasa, parówki, schab, szynka, indyk or kurczak. Practically every meal contains some sort of meat. Although that made it difficult, what made it almost impossible was the ‘cold’ criterion. Salad was all we could think of. In November.
Finally Agnieszka hit on her vegetable salad and we made that, along with one of celeriac, pineapple and sweetcorn. Both went down really well, except in the case of one little girl who tasted and then, very slowly, let it re-emerge from her mouth. The offending mouthful of salad was deftly caught and hidden by her dad, who looked sheepishly at us but grinned when he saw us smiling.People seemed to like the salad, were confused about where Poland was, but on the whole everything went well. It was a shame the weather was crap, lots of rain and wind, as this affected the turnout. It would’ve also been nice to see more variety as, after the last one, we got the feeling it would be all the same faces at every one of these gatherings. We’ll miss the next one unfortunately, being in Poland when it’s on, but I am sure we’ll get another chance to show the world some ‘Polish kitchen’.
