I had a craving for beets yesterday - probably because my stomach has been bugging me in the last few days, and beets usually help balance my digestion...
Oddly enough, I don't remember eating borscht at home as a kid - at least not hot borscht. We often had saltibarsciai - cold beet soup - in the summer, a pepto-bismal-pink, buttermilk-based soup that's delicious and refreshing when you don't want to turn the stove on. That said, I never ate it when I was younger because I hated beets. Now they're one of my favorite vegetables - I love their earthy sweetness. I think they taste like dirt, but in a good way!
So I wanted to make barsciai (to use the Lithuanian) yesterday, and poked around in various cookbooks and online to find a recipe that looked good. A lot of recipes called for beef broth - either canned or homemade - which I didn't have, nor did it make sense to me to make broth outside of the soup-making process, especially since I had time to invest in cooking. I wound up following this recipe for Ukranian borscht, more or less: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/6008 - key differences being: adding the meat back in with the potatoes (the recipe leaves it cooling on the counter) and swapping out the raw garlic for sauteed. I also was agressive about skimming the fat - I put the broth in the freezer until the fat had solidified. I find fatty broth totally unappetizing.
The results were great! Sweet, meaty, tangy from the lemon juice - and plentiful leftovers. The allspice in the broth reminds me of my great-aunt's soups...
I have been eating for the last seven months.
15 years ago
3 comments:
I was the same way about beets as a kid, and I'm still not a huge fan, but I've always loved when you've made them. Your talking about Indian food a couple weeks ago got me to make this dish: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spinach-Red-Lentil-and-Bean-Curry/Detail.aspx
(with chickpeas not beans) served with naan. Was super yummy, for these flavor-deprived tastebuds.
If you have another beet craving, try this risotto recipe. Sounds weird, but it's delicious. Of note: it reheats well, even if you freeze it.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/15293
Hi Julija,
To make the Romanian summer variation of bortsch (in Romanian you call it bors), you can cook it with chicken meat/broth, and sprinkle a plant call "leustean"( I have not found the equivalent of leustean in the local markets, nor the equivalent word in English). I will introduce you to leustean next time you visit us. I love it, but maybe it's because it reminds me of home. You will have to tell me. The traditional recipe is not with lemon but with this liquid made of fermented corn and wheat flour, dill and a sour cherry branch (!), that I used to go buy from an old lady when I was a kid. :)
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