Borscht

Your schedule finally allows you time at home to have dinner with your family. Your mouth is watering with anticipation of a delicious home-cooked meal as you breathe in the bouquet of robust flavours in the air, but you can’t quite put your finger on what’s cooking.  Memories from childhood are evoked by the aroma of simmering beef.  Now … imagine sitting down at the supper table and your partner places a bowl of ruby-red soup in front of you announcing 'dinner is served'.  

For some, this delightful presentation would arouse an eagerness to savor such pleasing flavor.  Or, a mere bowl of soup may prompt disappointment as you were looking forward to a hearty three-course meal. 

Borscht is an Eastern European classic.  Made with beef broth and beetroot, this soup takes many variations.  Some make their borscht a rich broth with full-bodied flavor.  Others prefer it with chunks of beets and cabbage in the rich red broth. 

I’ve read that traditional Ukrainian borscht is made with a combination of beef and pork chuck or shank simmered for hours to create a flavour-rich stock.  Some use smoked meats.  The beetroot may be boiled or roasted.  And typically, it only requires 2 or 3 beets to make a pot of this delicious soup.

We had borscht the other day.  Its Yiddish roots inspired me to serve the soup with corned beef sandwiches on Bavarian rye bread.

My capable assistant who is more familiar with borscht than I am showed me her way of making it.  Since I don’t eat onion, we used ginger in the mirepoix (a flavor base typical in French cooking). 

We started by sautéing ginger, celery and carrot.  Meanwhile, we boiled our beets with the skins on.  When the mirepoix was tender, we added a home-made broth made from beef bones.  We also added beef stock made with bouillon.  The boiled beets were peeled and chunked, then added to the soup.  A little dried dill, salt, pepper and sugar were added to the flavoring.  Typical to borscht is a lengthy simmering.  We allowed the flavors to mingle and marry for a good two hours.  Our borscht was made in the morning so after turning off the stove, it sat on the counter all day until dinner time.  By the time this beautiful red soup was warmed and ladled in our soup dishes the flavors were magnified. 

Our borscht and corned beef sandwich dinner was a delight.  The chunks of beets were so tender they literally melted in my mouth.  There was a perfect balance of sweetness mixed with savory.  Most of all, the broth was rich and felt quite satisfying in my belly.  The corned beef sandwiches were a perfect accompaniment as the tang of mustard on the salty beef mellowed with the sweetness of the borscht.

You might not consider soup and a sandwich to be a hearty and satisfying meal until you discover this flavorful ruby-red treat.