Washington gives Polish delicacies a try

It’s not every day that one sees Washington VIPs, ambassadors and members of the media collectively chowing down on pierogi and cabbage rolls. But that’s just what happened Friday at Polish ambassador Ryszard Schnepf’s D.C. residence as a packed crowd feted the release of a cookbook from Danielle Crittenden and Anne Applebaum: From a Polish Country House Kitchen.

Crittenden, a journalist/editor for The Huffington Post, calls herself an “unlikely cookbook writer” who was inspired to pen the collection of recipes while visiting fellow scribe Applebaum’s home in Poland. As the party’s co-hosts, the Hungarian and German ambassadors were seen devouring a sampling of dishes from the book, Crittenden said there’s a certain “excitement about bringing this food to life.”

The book comes after months and months of testing recipes among family, friends and colleagues. Crittenden says she and Applebaum even delivered their culinary creations to writer Christopher Hitchens before he passed away from cancer last year (she says the recipes “passed muster” with him).

Despite eating tons of Polish food this year, Crittenden’s husband, former President George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, says, “My favorite recipe in the book is a poached chicken that is a recreation of a dish that my great-grandfather ate every day of his life. And he lived to be 95. And he had every faculty of his brain and every hair on his head.”

Frum adds with a laugh, “When Danielle served me the dish, I said, ‘I see how you can have this dish every day.’ ”

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