Polish cuisine is a style of food preparation originating in and widely popular in Poland. Due to Poland's history, Polish cuisine has evolved over the centuries to be very eclectic, and shares many similarities with other national cuisines. Polish cooking in other cultures is often referred to as à la polonaise.
Complementary traditional Polish farmers food (bigos stew, pierogi dumplings, gołąbki cabbage rolls, skwarki cracklings)
Various kinds of Polish kielbasa. From the top down: biała, kabanos, wiejska with mustard
Oscypek, a Polish smoked cheese and traditional food of the Goral people in the Tatra Mountains
Bagels originated in Poland and became widespread during the migration of Polish Jews.
In English, kasha usually refers to the pseudocereal buckwheat or its culinary preparations. In Eastern European cuisine, kasha can apply to any kind of cooked grain. It can be baked but most often is boiled, either in water or milk, and therefore the term coincides with the English definition of 'porridge', but the word can also refer to the grain before preparation, which corresponds to the definition of 'groats'. This understanding of kasha concerns mainly Belarus (каша), the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and the Republic of Moldova, Russia (каша), Slovakia, Slovenia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine (каша), where the term, besides buckwheat, can apply to wheat, barley, oats, millet, rye and even rice. Kashas have been an important element of Slavic diet for at least 1,000 years.
Buckwheat kasha
Buckwheat with onions
A woman grinding kasha, an 18th-century drawing by J.-P. Norblin
Buckwheat porridge made in oven