Polish lard spread with cracklings

Smalec. You might say that smalec, Polish lard spread, and Prymitywna Kuchnia ought to be a couple. A couple going way back, yet here’s the snag. Can you imagine that smalec has never appeared in the entire history of Prymitywna Kuchnia? There isn’t a recipe for it here, or rather there wasn’t until now. A scandal. But perhaps that’s how it should be: it began with scrambled eggs, and will end with lard?

No, I’m not ready to finish yet, but at last there will be smalec. Yesterday, some situational irritation — meaning circumstances that weren’t particularly pleasant — put me in the mood to make it. Firstly, the irritation; secondly, the weather had changed a little, which meant travelling from southern Italy to Siberia in a single day. Perhaps that was it. Weather and irritation: two lard-loving factors.

When it’s cold, you feel like eating fattier food. After all, we’ve long since shed our… bikinis and swimming trunks. But I tell you, I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere in Poland, once I’d decided on smalec, I ran into a major problem: where to buy pork fatback. Around here, in Warsaw’s Wilanów district, that’s quite a challenge. To put it plainly, you can’t get it anywhere. Only after an hour of searching through 7 shops — yes, I was determined — did I finally find the last piece of lard in a large French chain beginning with A. Success at last. The recipe is below; it turned out excellent, although don’t let the colour fool you. It isn’t the traditional white because I added plenty of seasoning.

Still, rather than leaving this completely bare, without a story, I’ll tell you about something that happened to me once. It’s somewhat connected to this impossibility of buying fatback and a discussion I recently had at Kuchnia IKEA. That will get its own recipe-post: it’s not a kitchen from IKEA, but IKEA’s kitchen, where you cook, discuss and eat, or something like that 😉 A concept. Among other, more interesting things, we discussed how discount shops such as Biedronka and Lidl now give people everywhere in Poland access to a wide range of products. In other words, we can stuff ourselves with more food, and more interesting food too. Whether it’s necessarily healthier, I don’t know, but let’s leave that. There was supposed to be a story.

Well, about 20 years ago — Jesus, that was a long time ago — I was on a kayaking trip that took us through Ukta. There, as I may even have written before, my friend Krzysztof and I were sitting at a bus stop, wondering where we could watch some Champions League qualifier, or whatever competition it was back then, when we met a man carrying a plastic shopping bag. The bag suggested that this man, considerably older than us, had been shopping and was on his way home. Now imagine what he had in it. We know because he told us, inviting us to his house to watch the match and feast together. Yes, feast!

In that bag he had a huge piece of pork fatback. And a bottle of booze. That was the first time anyone offered me plain fatback drizzled with vinegar. Any later encounters with that tended to be in northern Asia. I didn’t eat it. As for his television burning out during the match, and why he had a groove down the middle of his head, you’ll have to look in another recipe; I’ve already described that there. Here, I’d just like to ponder, or rather throw out a question: would his bag today be from Biedronka? One thing’s certain: if it were, there definitely wouldn’t be any fatback in it. BECAUSE BIEDRONKA DOESN’T HAVE FATBACK, but it does have… avocados 🙂

At a glance:

Preparation time: about 3 hours

Time in the fridge, or on a cool balcony: ready overnight

Serves: at least a few people

Calories: smalec? It HAS them

Ingredients for traditional Polish lard spread made from pork fatback:

• 500 grams pork fatback
• 200 grams pork belly (mine was French pork belly, already cut up)
• 1 white onion (medium-sized)
• 1 red onion (a smaller one)
• 1 shallot
• olive oil (for frying the onions and pork belly)
• half a teaspoon of sugar
• dried marjoram
• salt
• black pepper
• sweet paprika

A recipe for excellent Polish smalec:

I could basically paste in today’s WhatsApp conversation here, because I’ve pretty much already written the recipe there. So let’s call this Prymitywna Kuchnia’s first “WhatsApp recipe”.

This smalec turned out really well. Here’s what I did: half a kilogram of pork fatback, 200 grams of pork belly, one white onion, one red onion and one shallot.

I rendered the fatback over a low heat for about 2, if not 3 hours, having first cut it into small pieces. Even so, quite a lot of cracklings remained. Meanwhile, I fried the pork belly and onions in a frying pan, seasoned with pepper, sweet paprika and marjoram.

When the fatback had finished rendering, I added the onions and pork belly from the pan and took it off the heat. I mixed it thoroughly and added a little salt and some more marjoram. Then I poured it into a jar and put it out on the balcony. By morning, the smalec was ready.

And that’s all 🙂 I particularly recommend it with a fermented cucumber, which unfortunately I don’t have 🙁

And here’s the proof that this is the first WhatsApp recipe-post 🙂 For an excellent smalec, too.