Bigos

"There's going to be hot bigos of lead and gunpowder."

"A maid, wishing to season bigos in haste, went with the pot for some vinegar to the cupboard, where, between other bottles, stood ink, as it was a time of frost. Having poured it in, she serves me bigos of a new style. I try some: the dog wouldn't eat it! And I think to myself, I have never seen bigos in mourning. So having noticed the mistake, I point at the cook: don't let the thief make an inkwell out of my rear!"

"There's still fatback with cabbage left, and veal bigos. So I shout out loud, 'After an Italian banquet, give me cabbage and bigos!'"

"Bigos, steaks, cutlets, pancakes, vols-au-vent, beef olives, brains, game and fruits make a light and nutritious breakfast."

"In the pots warmed the bigos; mere words cannot tell Of its wondrous taste, colour and marvellous smell. One can hear the words buzz, and the rhymes ebb and flow, But its content no city digestion can know. To appreciate the Lithuanian folksong and folk food, You need health, live on land, and be back from the wood. Without these, still a dish of no mediocre worth Is bigos, made from legumes, best grown in the earth; Pickled cabbage comes foremost, and properly chopped, Which itself, is the saying, will in one's mouth hop; In the boiler enclosed, with its moist bosom shields Choicest morsels of meat raised on greenest of fields; Then it simmers, till fire has extracted each drop Of live juice, and the liquid boils over the top, And the heady aroma wafts gently afar. Now the bigos is ready. With triple hurrah Charge the huntsmen, spoon-armed, the hot vessel to raid, Brass thunders and smoke belches, like camphor to fade, Only in depths of cauldrons, there still writhes there later Steam, as if from a dormant volcano's deep crater."

"One of the nobles had a box full of bigos. This thing, though tasty, is very hard to digest; bigos without vodka is sure to make you sick. Recently, Paul, when getting ready to go into the field, had some bigos, but didn't drink his vodka; he got such a stomach ache, they had to cure him with chamomile tea."

"Turkey in sauce, steak and bigos The lords of yore did munch; But nowadays, it's worms and snails On which, like storks, they lunch."

"In the meantime, Gaudentius, who didn't fail to make provisions for the journey with leftovers from the feast of Yasnohorod, reheated and consumed bigos, generously seasoned with sausages and fatback, which he had retrieved from a box, washing it down, in strictly calculated intervals, with ample doses of vodka, which he kept by his right-hand side in a large rectangular decanter. ... Bigos, as is known, induces great thirst, which had to be quenched with some concoction; nearby, at Finke's, this and other "remedies" were ready for savoring. This venture, undertaken with certain tact, yet amateurishly, took quite some time; it had been over an hour since the sun left the earthly horizon, when Mr. Pius, with the last drops from the last bottle, exorcised the effects of the greasy bigos."

"— How are you, old rogue? Why twist your nose as if you had found some unvirtuous odor? — In the whole camp of Sapieha it smells of bigos! — Why bigos? Tell me! — Beacuse the Swedes have cut up a great many cabbage heads!"

"Before they got to Żółtańce, Dub stopped the car twice and after the last stop he said doggedly to Biegler: 'For lunch I had bigos cooked the Polish way. From the battalion I shall make a complaint by telegram to the brigade. The sauerkraut was bad and the pork was not fit for eating. The insolence of these cooks exceeds all bounds. Whoever doesn't yet know me, will soon get to know me.'"

"Until now I was under the false impression that the Polish national dish was bigos, an exquisite stew of cabbage heads, bitter hearts and virulent liver, a dish full of acids and pungent smells. Someone would always "cook bigos" [i.e., make a mess] for somebody else, then they would slap one another in the face, in a newspaper or in a café, and life, replete with rosy cheeks, temperament and fulsomeness, was beautiful. It saddens me, though, to see that tradition fades, as does the noble dish of bigos, and it is beef tongue in the Polish style that now reigns supreme in the Polish menu. Bigos was an exuberant dish, announcing itself through its scent from afar, juicy and vigorous. Tongue in the Polish style is more intricate, sweetened with almonds and raisins; it is, indeed, the dumbest part of a thoughtless beast, but the sweetness of its seasoning is ineffably appetizing."

"On a general note, I've got to tell you that this sloppy language makes our constitution something akin to paltry bigos made from rotten ham, half-rotten fatback and half-cured sauerkraut; so that each paragraph and article may and should be read completely on its own, without linking it with any other article. Naturally, the rotten ham is for Mr. President, the half-rotten fatback is for the cabinet, and the members of parliament are left with the half-cured sauerkraut. As you can see, there's nothing their stomachs can do and what comes out is stench, so that all of Wiejska Street [where the Polish parliament is located] reeks. And the only way out of this chaos is to rewrite the constitution in a decent way. What's more, nobody has the right to interpret the constitution. Interpretation is forbidden – so the state is left with nothing but bigos."

"Holy smokes, now I've cooked some bigos!"

"Bigos is one of those Polish dishes that has been romanticized in poetry, discussed in its most minute details in all sorts of literary contexts, and never made in small quantities. ... In the manor house where my grandfather was born, the bigos was kept warm in a compartment in the great tile stove that heated the parlor where guests were received. It was handed out as a welcoming snack served on poppy seed toast, along with a glass of iced vodka or champagne. While Polish villagers often make a plain version of bigos in huge cauldrons over an open fire for wedding feasts, real bigos is best when it is baked very slowly at a low temperature in a ceramic pot. The evaporation alone should be enough to thicken it. Furthermore, it should not be served until at least one day old, preferably three: it needs time for the flavors to fuse into a highly complex and concentrated taste."

"There used to be three phases of arriving at a political decision in the Polish diet. The first phase was that of presenting views. Everyone could present any opinion they wanted. Then came the grinding phase. ... Grinding as in a great mortar, where you grind until you produce a uniform mass. Opinions were ground through a long-term discussion. But if this didn't help and if at least one person remained unconvinced or opposed, then he could take the floor of the Polish parliament, shout liberum veto and scurry away – thus dissolving the diet. So the Polish nobility came up with a third phase: it was the phase of making bigos. ... Bigos is a peculiar dish: shredded cabbage and chopped meat stewed for a long time. So the third phase – that of making bigos – meant that the rash nobles would grab their sabres and hack him to pieces, the one who upset the government, who upset the law, before he could get away."

"When the bigos was gone, guests scraped their plates, proving once again, as Nela said, there is "nothing better than a big pot of savory bigos.""