Outstanding Polish honey
Posted on 18 January 2009
By pure chance today, I walked past a Sunday market near the Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw. Various regional products from the Suwałki region in north-eastern Poland were on sale. There were breads, sausages, baskets, wooden carvings, clothes. This region, once the cradle of the now-defunct Yotvingian people, and now a borderland between Lithuania and Poland, is considered one of our most valuable natural reserves, with a very rural landscape of ancient woods, lakes and pastures. As a region of strong ethnic identity, it also boasts a rich culinary tradition with many savoury and sweet specialities.
One stand at the market caught my attention. The
Witkowski family from Puńsk was offering a staggering array of honeys. From what I gathered later browsing the www, Piotr Witkowski is considered one of the leading beekeepers in Northern Poland. His production technique is very traditional, all honeys are slowly cold-pressed and see minimal manipulation. My knowledge of honey production is extremely limited, but taste-wise these are probably the best honeys I ever tasted.Mustard honey is the lightest of the three. A light yellow-orange colour, it has a spicy, almost meaty aroma giving way to various yellow fruits. Quite a distinctive taste, and a medium-grained texture with good length.
Piotr Witkowski’s mustard honey.
Buckwheat honey is a style quite widespread in Poland, but is difficult to make and therefore expensive. It is a richly-flavoured honey with a distinctive, spicy, savoury taste that I enjoy on colder days, and have in the past used in cooking (e.g. to flavour a panna cotta). Witkowski’s version is truly Baroque in its richness of flavour and its fantastically smooth, silky texture. 
But the most extraordinary of these is the dandelion honey. In Poland it is usually considered a medicinal honey (for stomach aches etc.), and is quite rare. Being produced in the early summer, this version has fully crystallised, and has a thick creamy, almost pomadey texture. The flavour is simply amazing. There are reminiscences of stone fruits, ripe citrus, vanilla, with an almost liqueur-like texture on the palate. A unique taste experience!
Mniszek lekarski = dandelion.