This is a shoe-in topic for my Southern friends — fried food.
Hell. This is about holiday based entirely on fried food.
And also, as this story evolves, fried food stuffed with a completely different type of food. A Southerners dream. To combine otherwise un-combinable fried foods is an act of culinary genius, and casual insanity. This is the stuff of a Southerner’s dreams.
A paczek (POON-check) is the most normal, and yet strangest desert I’ve ever encountered. More popularly referred to in its plural form of Paczki (POON-shkee), this deep-fried ball of sugar, fruit filing and happiness takes over the minds and schedules of many historically Polish areas of the country (and world).
I never really understood their unique nature. As a child growing up going along with my Polish father to visit my Polish grandmother in the very Polish part of Detroit, Paczki were: always around and available, always a point of mispronunciation, and always a point of truth-manipulating to one’s parents.
“How many paczki have you had?”
“Just the one!”, I would lie, as I licked the sugar from my fourth donut off my fingers.
Little did I know that in Detroit, Paczki day (Feb. 28th) is a massive deal. With people lining up outside of Polish bakeries starting in the wee hours of the day, and waiting for a box of these fried shenanigans ceremoniously filled with a variety of things*: strawberry, raspberry, custard, lemon and even bourbon.*
* There is a chance that perhaps one of those fillings was made up, but I digress.
The craze became so intense that even a rideshare organization offered to pick up a boxed dozen of these gems and deliver them to you to, all for the modest fee of $20. Saving you time and energy which can now be devoted to shot-gunning these frosty, fruit-filled balls of (future) sugary-regret down the gullet of you and yours.
They are delicious though. There is absolutely no way around it. And then, just when you think the wheel couldn’t be reinvented, a famous local Detroit coney dog establishment offers a one day only paczki-coney.
Yes, dear reader, you read correctly.
The entire set up of a Detroit style coney contained entirely within a paczek. Hotdog, onions, mustard and chili. Pure bliss. It wasn’t a novelty ploy, but actually thought out. They chose to use paczki which did not have any sort of filling. The balance of sweetness and saltiness was successfully struck. What started out as eating it for a novel story ended with being quite surprised how good it was and wanting another.
I think all of this history and culture is so curious and fascinating. The paczki are just a catalyst for so many other things. They are a reason for people to get together to wait at bakeries, for stories to be told about how people used to eat them, have light-hearted arguments about which bakeries make them best, and also reasons for my team at work to take a break and all come and watch myself and one other colleague try the paczki-coney (after some not-insignificant pressuring from my boss).
All-in-all, Paczki day is a good day. It brings people out and spurs conversations which are bigger than ourselves. I enjoy that.
Cheers y’all,
Everett