It was my birthday last week (thank you for all your best wishes) and as is now the custom the gang of 4 - Lin, Steve, Wendy and I - headed for our cultural weekend away in a European City to soak up a bit of culture and eat good food.  This year we landed in a -8 degree Krakow. 

 It was great for us to see the homeland of so many of our team members.

We travelled around the amazing salt mines, with chamber after chamber of salt-carved chapels and conference room (yes a conference centre!), which were beautifully preserved.  We took a trip to Auschwitz which was hard to take, I could write months worth of blogs about that alone.  In fact it’s so important that next week I will give you my thoughts!  

I was told by one of our team members the other day that Polish traditional food was suppressed during Communist times but is now making a comeback. Traditional Polish food consists of Slavic flavours, but also has influences from Italy and France.  These date back to the medieval Polish court. The Polish traditional foods we found on our trip were flavourful, hearty, and complex, but they have a lighter side, too.

Polish traditional food features many soups, made with mushrooms, broth, and beetroots. But imagine, if you will, a hearty hunter’s stew that is a meal in itself. This stew, called Bigos, is a combination of cabbage, mushrooms, and various meats - traditionally pork, bacon, and delicious Polish sausage, but in some restaurants I also saw it made with venison or duck.

Justyna, in the office insisted we try Pierogi.  These are a definite Polish staple now, inspired by a traditional Russian dish from the Middle Ages, but they are as Polish as Polish food gets. These Dough filled with cheese, potatoes, onions, cabbage, mushrooms, meat (or almost any other ingredient, savourysweet, that you  or can think of), pierogi are served steaming hot boiled or fried and are accompanied by sour cream.

It's fair to say that Wendy has discovered the warming benefits of Vodka! She looked quite the part knocking back vodka in her new fur-esque tsarina hat. It took some committed research, but after knocking back orange, bison grass, cherry, lemon, honey, and raspberry vodka, she settled on cherry vodka as her favourite: I have to say that I never knew Wendy was an expert Cossack dancer!

If you want to experience some great Polish food we have some great restaurants in London and the South East...

• Baltic, close to Waterloo, is great for parties
• Daquise, in South Kensington, is a classic restaurant
• Tatra, great value cosy restaurant in Shepherds Bush
• Gospoda, in Reading really flys the flag
• Patio award-winning restaurant, again near Shepherds Bush 
• Bar Polski, Holborn - a Polish Cafe with hundreds of types of vodka!