Native Language With Your Child - Polish Potato Pancakes and Doughnuts

Second language is always a plus. If the house is bilingual or multilingual the child acquires the second or third language without a big effort and any limitations.

By setting an example and speaking your native language at home you encourage your child to use your mother tongue. Your child can connects to you, the relatives, their culture, history, identity and religion.

Find ways to help your child maintain and improve their mother tongue. Involve your child in simple tasks and use your language in carrying them out - whether it’s making a shopping list, preparing a snack or cooking traditional food from a grandmother’s recipe.

This time my daughter made Polish Potato Pancakes (similar to latkes), literally translated in Polish as "Placki Ziemniaczane." 

Recipe for "Placki Ziemniaczane"

(English version will be easier for you to understand the steps she had to follow in Polish.)

Ingredients:

One onion, two eggs and two spoonful of wheat flour per each kilogram of potatoes. If you are allergic to flour you don't have to add it, replace it with one extra egg.

Pinch of salt (and pepper) for flavor.

Accompaniments: sour cream and applesauce

Step-by-Step

Peel potatoes and onion and grate or ground them.

 

Transfer the mixture to a fine colander or strainer to wring out as much of the liquid as possible. 

 

Keep the liquid in a pot for a minute. Drain off  potato juice leaving potato flour. You will add it to the other ingredients. 

 

Mix grated potatoes with the other ingredients and shallow-fry on hot oil.

 

 

Served plain, or sweet with sugar, sour cream, and apple sauce, as well as no sweet with mushroom sauce, goulash, or bacon crisps.

 

Paczki - Polish Doughnuts