If the only ways of preparing potatoes you can think of are fried, boiled or baked, then you clearly have had little experience of Polish cuisine. We made the humble potato our national treasure and it’s at the core of an infinite number of traditional and regional dishes. These include potato pancakes (placki ziemniaczane), Silesian dumplings (kluski ślaskie), potato dumplings (pyzy), potato and cheese dumplings (pierogi ruskie), plum dumplings (knedle)….I could go on and on…The potato is the single ingredient that best represents Polish cuisine. Nutritious and versatile, it has also been our constant companion during the hardships of poverty and war, when resourcefulness was essential in order to survive.
Potato babka is a very traditional dish of the region that I’m from in the north-east of Poland and it requires relatively few ingredients. The only tricky part is grating. You can either grate the potatoes by hand, as fine as you can, or use an electric grater. Grating by hand can be a lot of work, especially when you’re feeding a lot of people. I don’t have an electric grater but I used a NutriBullet which I love and it does its job incredibly well.
…