On the evening of Good Friday, I make my way East on St. Marks Place, past the bong-sellers and piercing dens that prey on NYU freshmen. It's a different neighborhood than when I came to New York as a college freshman nine years ago. The East Village, like the rest of Manhattan, is giving in to serial Starbuckses and two-thousand-dollar studio apartments. But I know there are vestiges of an older New York just around this corner.

On First and Second Avenues, in the blocks around St. Marks, a proud immigrant community has left a footprint on the path to Brighton Beach. This is, for lack of a better name, Little Little Odessa, a faint echo of the Slavic outpost that once thrived here and has since relocated to Brooklyn and beyond. The neighborhood is dominated by Ukrainians, but Poles and Slovaks have a claim to it as well. Tonight is the night to shop for Easter dinner, and the tri-state area's slavic peoples are converging on these bleak streets to remember what it means to be their parents' children.

Lisa is half-Polish, and to her Easter means fresh kielbasa. Banish from your mind all associations with Hillshire Farm. Kielbasa is a thick pork and garlic sausage that is usually hot-smoked before consumption. For Easter, Polish families get the sausage prior to smoking, and braise it with sauerkraut and spices. Lisa has happily participated in my family's holiday traditions, so I am returning the favor. I am breaking the Passover fast to make her an Easter dinner that, hopefully, will remind her of home.

On Second Avenue between St. Marks and 9th lies Julian Baczynsky's East Village Meat Market. The fresh kielbasa pictured above sits out on the counter; in a few minutes it will be gone -- purchased by a Polish mother -- and replaced with fresh links. I get one length of "kobasy" and a jar of "kapusta" (Polish sauerkraut). I pass over the stacks of stuffed cabbage and the rows of babkas that are being carted in from an off-site bakery and dusted with powdered sugar right in front of my eyes -- I'll be making my own, thank you.

On to First Avenue between St. Marks and 7th, and the Kurowycky Meat Products store. Martha Stewart Living Magazine has put Kurowycky's kielbasa on its April calendar, and there's a line out the door. But I'm patient, and the crowd is friendly. In front of me, a man in his late forties with a thick Long Island accent is going over the holiday schedule with his two young daughters. When his turn comes up, he leans over to the toe-headed seventeen-year old behind the deli counter and starts placing his order in fluid Ukrainian. The boy behind the counter responds in kind. I wonder if the two girls understand the exchange; my guess is they probably don't.

I leave Kurowycky's with a length of fresh kielbasa and a box of "chrusciki": deep-fried "angel's wing" cookies dusted in powdered sugar. Most of the other patrons are ordering smoked meats -- especially hams, for which Kurowycky claims to be famous. But I've got all I need for a classic Easter dish, plus a little extra for a comparative taste test. If I'm going to make this pilgrimage year after year, I'd like to know where to get the best kobasy on the block.

On bag design, I think Baczynsky has Kurowycky beat hands down. And Baczynsky's fresh kobasy definitely looks fresher. The seasoning of both sausages is very similar: palate-crushing amounts of garlic and salt. Both are stuffed in natural casings. The difference here appears to be in the grind. Baczynsky's kobasy is coarser, studded with chunks of pork the size of cherries. Kurowycky's sausage, aside from being more finely ground, seems to have a higher proportion of fat to lean meat than Baczynsky's. This makes for a smoother, tastier sausage. I think from now on I'll be braving the lines on First Avenue.

But this year, both sausages made it into the pot, along with a jar of sauerkraut (drained and rinsed), some peppercorns, juniper berries and cloves, a handful of caraway seeds, and a bay leaf. I browned the sausages in butter first, then cut them into chunks and braised them on low heat with the other ingredients for a couple of hours. I omitted the apple juice, chicken broth, and soup vegetables that some recipes call for -- from what Lisa tells me they don't belong on her Easter table.

I've never been to a real Polish Easter dinner, so I don't know if my cooking is true to the methods of Polish grandmothers who still truck into the East Village on Good Friday. But Lisa loved the end result, so as far as I can tell I'm doing my part to help the traditions of her forbears maintain a foothold in Manhattan.