Dondero: Sausage a tradition for Polish-Americans families

Growing up with best friends whose grandparents were from Krakow, Poland, I frequently tasted the homemade breads, coffee cakes, noodles, cabbage rolls and sausage dishes from that region.

My friends' parents, the next generation, were caterers, with whom I eagerly worked with, even as a kid. Polish-American weddings were their specialty.

A centerpiece wedding dish was what they called "Easter Sausage," garlic-and-spice-scented kielbasa sausage braised in a robust cabbage-and-sauerkraut mixture tinted with tomato. I loved it.

Later, I learned several nuances about that dish, but it was not diminished for me.

Kielbasa sausage for Easter and weddings is traditional among Polish-Americans rather than in Poland.

Polish-American culinary culture emerged among impoverished immigrants in a new land cut off from classier old-country foods. Garnished kielbasa (the word simply means "sausage") was an affordable taste of home. It grew to become a "must-have" for ethnically traditional events.

The real Easter sausage is actually a freshly made, un-smoked specialty, somewhat different from the familiar commercial kielbasa. In Catholic Poland in the old days, meats generally would not be prepared or sold until the end of Lent, and not consumed until after Easter Mass.

Unless you are lucky enough to live near a real Polish sausage maker, or shop online, the option for Easter is the more familiar, lightly smoked kielbasa.

Finally, the cabbage and sauerkraut garnish for the sausage dish I learned, though it certainly can be Polish fare, has strong Germanic influence.

My friends' grandparents, being from Krakow, in the south of Poland, grew up in the Austrian zone of that then-partitioned country.

However, despite these subtleties, the "Polish Easter Sausage" I learned to make is still a great dish.

I prepared it for the wedding of my daughter Lisa, whose

Related News: