Frozen Polish

Went to ASDA in Cape Hill, Smethwick.

My nearest supermarket is TESCO in Fiveways, but for some reason I do not like many of the stuff sold at TESCO. I've ended up in changing two buses to go shopping in Cape Hill.

Anyway.

I was looking for frozen prawns and went to the section where they used to be kept. What I found, however, was these.

Frozen Polish Food!

The ones to the left are tripe soups, and to the left, I think, is a sort of mushroom pizzas.

Frozen Pierogi and another sort of dumplings.

More Pierogi!

There were more other stuff.

So, if you want to find frozen Polish food, now you know where you should go!

Beirut Has Gone

Yesterday, passing Bristol Street in the bus, I saw Beirut Lebanese restaurant closed with a piece of paper attached on the door. So, today, I went there to check what is written.

This is the announcement.



Probably it is difficult to read, so I summerise. It says the management has decided to replace the Lebanese restaurant by a fast food shop. The closure is dated the 3 August, so our last visit was just about 10 days before the closure. It explains the stale(-ish) food we were served.

So if you fancy Lebanese food in Birmingham, you need to go all the way to Syriana in Snowhill, which is not situated as convenient as Beirut for most of us.

And, by chance, we saw also this fast food shop was closed. This is just about 10 metres away from Beirut.



In this case, the closure was not peaceful and the announcement on the door says the place was reoccupied by the landload. Evidently it happened in April, but I have not noticed until now.

And yet another closure. The Duet Polish restaurant on Hurst Street is not there any more. I think it happened some time ago, and now there is an announcement of imminent opening of Torino cafeteria.



It will sell italian style sandwiches and pastas. I would guess it is an Italian style fast food shop.

Wokmania is still closed and there is no sign of refurbishment and convertion to a new venue. So, in general, there is no good news in this area for now.

Polish Donut

When I went to buy the usual Polish bread from my local Polish grocer, I bought also a donut.

Although it was pretty obvious from the appearance, I asked the guy in the shop what it was. He said "It is Polish. There is marmalade inside". So I asked for one.

I don't know if you see it from the photo, it is larger than usual jam donuts.



This is how it looks inside.



The bread part isn't too oily, and tastes lighter than how it looks. The sugar coating is only on the upper surface, and it gives a right amount of sweetness.

The filling was jam, and not marmalade. Is it maybe bacause the jam is called marmalade in Polish, as well as in Italian? Anyway, the strawberry jam is not very sugarly, and very fruity. I thought that I have to try Polish jam, next time I go there.

For 60p a pop, it is more expensive than at Baker's Oven (larger, though), but cheaper than at Krispy Kreme. Having eaten it, I thought it was reasonable.

The Polish shop sells other types of sweet breads, and I want to try them, too. :)

Polish-ish Bread

As I ran out of bread, I bought "Polish bread" from a local Polish grocer. 89p of a loaf of 800g.

I have bought this several times in the past, and I like it very much. It is "Polish" but not imported from Poland; in fact the factory seems to be in the area where I live.



The flour is half wheat and half rye. The colour is very grey-ish comparing to normal white wheat bread and firmer in texture.



It is excellent as toast or as sandwich. I like it less as meal accompaniment, although it is a matter of taste.

Try this if you have a chance!

More new restaurants in Chinatown area

I am in Easter break from today until Thursday next week. Wow.

As yesterday was like a Friday to me, I decided to go to the Lebanese restaurant Beirut where I have been wanting to go (I reviewed it here), but for one reason or the other, it was put off until yesterday. I will write a review very soon.

Before going to Beirut, I walked around the area between Holloway Circus to Chinatown, and found some new restaurants. I am not sure when I will have a chance to visit them, but here I make a memo about them.

First, the Shisha cafe in the Smallbrook Queensway is not Indian restaurant, "Royal Bengal".



The menu is like the one of usual curry houses; nothing new.


Then, next to Chung Ying Garden (Thorp St.), now there is a large Caribbean buffet restaurant called Cuizene.



When we walked in front at around 9:00 there wasn't anyone eating. It is a bit worrying considering it was practically a "Friday night". We grabbed a flyer, which says, all-you-can-eat lunch buffet for £5.99 and dinner buffet for £11.99 (limited choice during the lunch hours). Not being a big eater, I am not keen of buffet (I feel like losing money!), but I might go to see what's on offer.

Lastly there is a Polish restaurant in Hurst street.



The menu looks rather limited, but I might give it a go very soon.

I posted the addresses and phone numbers of Cuizene and Duet on WonderBirmingham (click here).

Polish Pickled Fish

When I bought Pierogi from a Polish grocery in Birmingham town centre, I got also pickled fish.



This bottle contains 400g (but only 200g of solid mass), and costs 1.50GBP, which I found quite reasonable.

It is not complicated to eat; just pull the fish out of the bottle and then eat! I like to eat it with salad, but should be good also with boiled potato. The Poles seem to eat it also with cream; I tried once, but found it unpalatable.

Considering that many English people like sour food (I am referring to pickled onions, garkins, various sour relishes, and very sour berries), I guess some would like pickled fish.

If you want to try, go to Polish grocers (but recently many Asian grocers and normal supermarkets have Polish food, too). I listed some in this page.

http://www.wonderbirmingham.co.uk/birmingham/internationalfoods_en.html

Pierogi (Polish dumplings)

This Saturday, I went to a Polish grocery shop in the city centre to get the address so that I can list it on my "international grocers" page. And as I was there, I decided to buy something, but unfortunately, husband is on Lenten fasting and I could not buy anything dairy, meat, or fish.

In the end I found this: pierogi with cabbage and mushrooms. Sounds Vegan.

Pierogi are Polish dumplings, and should be a cousin of Italian ravioli and Chinese giaozi.




One packet contains 400 g. of Pierogi, and the price is £1.60 no matter what is the filling.

The package was saying that these could be eaten cold or hot (microwaved or deep-fried). I guess I could have boiled them, but decided to reheat with tomato sauce.



(You might wonder why I was having ravioli with rice; well, combining various carbohydrates is what happens often to us during the Lenten period).

They had a pretty thick skin, and carbo-heavy (the package says that the skin does not contain butter or egg - banned items during the Lenten fasting), but they were sufficiently pleasant. They might have gone well also in soup.




This is how it looked when I cut it in the middle with folk. The cabbage was actually the pickled version (Sauerkraut). Although I did not recognise the mushrooms visibly, they did taste of mushroom, possibly dried porcini.

We both liked them, and will buy again.

Polish cheese for the first time

From the Polish grocery Polka in my neighbourhood I bought this Polish cheese. This is one side of the package (for those who know Polish).

And this is the other side of the package. Inside is white sweet (meaning "no salt") cheese, similar to Italian ricotta cheese. The Polish guy in the shop told me that it could be eaten also with sugar.




When I tried it raw, however, it had a bit unpleasant taste, similar to milk going sour (but I don't think the cheese was actually going bad). I would not eat even with sugar as it is.

So I decided to cook it.

I mixed the cheese with little salt, fresh chili and fresh dill and put the mixture inside long red peppers I bought from supermarket.

After 30 min. in oven, something like this came out.



After being cooked, the cheese lost unpleasant flavour, and tasted actually better than ricotta cooked in the same wise. Very nice. Similar to the stuffed peppers in Greece. I will try again.

Polish Restaurant "Polonia"

Some time ago, we went to a Polish restaurant in a place called Great Bridge, near West Bromwich.

We have never eaten Polish food, and I got curious when I read good reviews about this newly opened restaurant. As I have written in the past, a lot of new immigrants are coming from Poland and my impression is that this restraunt is mainly targeted on them.



Looking from outside, it is not promising. Besides, it is very difficult to find, as it does not face directly on the street.

Inside, however, it is another world: it is cosy and elegant. Only distraction is the large flat screens on the wall with Polish MTV style programme on.

Guests were mainly Polish, but the menu is in bilingual and the waiting staff (well, I guess these are the people who have the restaurant) speak good enough English.

Dim and I ordered 2 starters, 2 mains, 1 side, and 1 bottle of beer. This is the first dish: ravioli in beetroot soup. The interest thing is that we can read on the menu, as to main dishes, how many grammes of food are to be served. I have heard that in some East European coutries (and maybe in Germany?), the restaurants have to indicate on the menu how many grammes of meat they mean to serve. There must be a similar rule in Poland.

The soup was sour and had a smoky flavour. Ravioli in themselves were not big deal, but they went well with the soup. Dim does not usually like soup, but when I gave him the bowl to test it, he finished it without leaving me anything!

D’s starter was marinated herring with cream.



One fillet of raw salted herring, and raw onion slices mixed with heavy sour cream. I love raw blue fish and I have bought and enjoyed several times Polish fish marinated in oil or vinegar, but this one was far too salty. We were also served several slices of Polish bread, but they disappeared to finish this salty fish.

These are the main dishes. Mine was a potato pancake in a Hungarian style and Dim's was bigos (mixed meat with sauerkraut). They were both presented beautifully. Potato pancake was green, and folded in the middle to wrap meat (I think it was chicken) stew with paprika pepper pieces. On top of it there were tomato sauce and white cream. I did not like it so much, as the meat was cooked too long, resulting in the consistency of meat served in airplane, and most of all, it was too salty.

Bigos was various bits of sausages and hams cooked with sauerkraut, that came with chips that we asked as side dish (included in the price of main dish). It was, again, too salty.

The “mixed salad” was not what I imagined, but basically 4 types of picked vegetables. Although I love picked vegetable, on that occasion I would have preferred raw veggie to neutralize heavily salted main dishes.

The price for all these, with 1 bottle of beer came ca. £18. So it was very good value for two two-course meals. But I could not enjoy because of excessive quantity of salt. It is a pity that I cannot return.

If you are interested, here is their address and phone number.

http://www.birminghamplus.com/items/items.asp?iid=2506

New Polish Grocery "Polka" Open!

A new Polish grocery "Polka" opened near our home a couple of weeks ago, and we went there right after the opening.



Many of the stuff are dry food like biscuits, tinned or bottled foods, instant dried food (Knorr style soup, stew mix etc.), but there is a small fridge in which hams, sausages, cheese and preserved fish are kept.

We decided to sample some.



This is a glass container of preserved herrings. Herrings seemed to be first treated with vinegar, then rolled with shredded onions and carrots, and soaked in oil. I had bought in the past two types of Polish preserved fish from another Polish grocery in Digbeth area of Birmingham, but this one tasted better than those.



This a kind of smoked ham. 470g for £2.74 is cheaper than average British hams, but this is waterier and a bit too salty than my liking.

Not bad, however.



I cut thick slices of it and made ham eggs, and ate with Polish bread. Thick ham slices give me an idea of luxury, as when I was young ham was very expensive in Japan.

Nice.

For the address, see this page