Żurek

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 1 hour active, plus 72 to 120 hours (3 to 5 days) for the zakwas.

Ingredients

For the zakwas (make ahead)

• 1 cup rye flour
• 1 litre warm water
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 bay leaf
• a few allspice berries

• 750 ml pork or chicken stock
• 500 ml zakwas, as above
• 200 g smoked kiełbasa, sliced
• 2 potatoes, diced
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, halved
• to taste marjoram
• to taste garlic
• to taste bay leaf
• to taste soured cream, to finish

Method

1. Make the zakwas ahead: combine the rye flour, water, garlic, bay leaf and allspice in a clean jar, cover loosely and stir daily, at 20 to 22°C, until it smells strongly and cleanly sour with light surface bubbling, in 3 to 5 days.
2. Simmer the stock with the potato until nearly tender.
3. Add the sliced kiełbasa, marjoram, a crushed garlic clove and a bay leaf, simmer 10 minutes.
4. Stir in the zakwas off a hard boil, warming through gently rather than boiling it hard, which flattens the sour ferment character.
5. Finish with soured cream and serve with a hard-boiled egg half in each bowl.

What a modern chef changes

A judged, not clocked, ferment, and a schmaltz-enriched finish across the two traditions

Rung 1

Method

1. Taste the zakwas daily from day 3 rather than trusting a fixed day count, judging readiness by smell and a light, even effervescence, exactly as rung 1 argues, and hold it in the fridge once it reaches the character you want rather than letting it run past its best out of habit.
2. Finish the soup with a spoonful of rendered schmaltz stirred through at the table, alongside, not instead of, the traditional soured cream, a genuine, honestly-flagged crossover from this chapter's other table, adding a savoury depth neither cream alone nor butter would give.
3. Smoke your own kiełbasa per the ferment bench below rather than buying pre-smoked, since the soup's whole character depends on real wood smoke rather than a liquid smoke flavouring, which several named UK-sold "Polish style" sausages substitute.