Kutia

The story

Kutia — cooked wheat berries mixed with poppy seeds, honey, walnuts, and sometimes dried fruit — comes from the eastern lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, today part of Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania, so in the more western parts of Poland it is less common than, say, barszcz or pierogi. The grain of wheat stands for life and fertility, the honey and poppy seeds for the sweetness and abundance wished for the new year; in the families that keep the custom, kutia is traditionally the first dish eaten at Wigilia, before all the others. Making it means simmering whole wheat berries for a long time until they soften, then patiently grinding the poppy seeds with a wooden pestle in a special rough-surfaced clay bowl (a makutra) until they release their oil and turn to a paste — a step that cannot be skipped, because poppy seeds that are not ground enough stay bitter and hard. Kutia is one of the best examples of how much the “Polish” Wigilia is really a cross-border tradition, shared by the whole of that former region.