28.02.08: Definitive Borscht

As regular readers of this blog well know, borscht has been a recurring theme. Way back on Day 12, Lou essayed a recipe so simple that we could hardly call it Borscht since it was basically a beetroot puree. Then I had a go with a recipe from the Soup Bible. Then I had another go and so did she. By now, I reckon we're about ready to settle upon a definitive recipe.

Borscht is traditionally made with beef stock, so the main issue with making a vegetarian version is how to get that flavour and the secret is: Marmite! Not just Marmite, but mushrooms, too, sweated right down in the mirepoix to surrender their bosky essence. Like this:

For the mirepoix, you will require a pound or half a kilo each of onions, carrots and celery, plus half a head of garlic. Buy five kilos of beets, four decent sized Bramley cooking apples, and a 750g punnet of field mushrooms. You'll also need cream or yoghurt and chives or dill for the garnish. I like thick Greek yogurt thinned with a little lemon juice to make it runnier and a clump of chives one can cut straight into the soup with scissors.

1. Roughly chop the onions, carrots and celery and sweat them in a splash of oil in the bottom of your soup pot with the peeled and crushed garlic. Keep the lid on the soup pot to keep the moisture in, but stir the contents often.

2. Next, add the mushrooms. You don't have to bother chopping them. You'll want to sweat them right down and they will release a lot of moisture. Keep the lid on, but keep stirring.

3. Apples are a bit of a controversial ingredient, but add a delightfully fruity note. Peel, core and chop the Bramleys and add the to the pot, stirring them into the mixture.

4. As the soup pot continues to cook over low heat, peel and chop the beets. Add them to the pot, stirring them into the mirepoix, and add sufficient liquid to cover, probably two litres. You need a dark vegetable stock: Marigold bouillon mixed with a dessert spoon of Marmite per litre.

5. Boil the beets quite vigorously for half an hour until they're soft enough to be blended and then liquidise, homogenise and blend, blend, blend your borscht. Add more liquid to create a silky texture and achieve your desired consistency.

6. Serve with an optional swirl of yogurt, or cream, chopped chives or dill, and black pepper.

Dairy comment: 'borscht as good as a Porche!'

Occupational hazard: beetroot hands

14.12.07: Fresh Beetroot

Magda works for the cleaning company that has its offices almost next door to the Pullens Centre and is one of our regulars, often bringing in her own bowl so she can take her soup back to the office. Being Polish, her house mates assume she must make a pretty good borscht and no doubt she could if she put her mind to it, but this weekend we agreed to help her out and Lou made beetroot soup for everyone, but especially for Magda and her dinner party guests.

As on Day 12, Lou bought a net of beets from Crusons in Camberwell and followed the absurdly simple recipe she found in The Great Green Cookbook: boil 'em up, rub off their skins, add stock (enriched with Marmite) and puree. I'm calling this 'Fresh Beetroot Soup', rather than 'Borscht', because I don't think it would work unless the beets were absolutely fresh. As it happened on Friday, however, they were and this soup certainly hit the spot.

I did manage to slip over the Pullens Centre for soup, but wasn't able to there much over the second half of the week because the contractors finally got around to my flat and I had a yard full of Polish guys in florescent vest (see left). I don't want to moan (but I'm going to anyway): I put up with four months of living in semi-darkness while the scaffolding was up, all Summer long, yet they waited until the coldest days of the year to paint my window frames and front door. Wonder what the Polish is for 'sod's law'?

Day 12: Simple Borscht

We've been talking about borscht practically since day one, but until now the discussion has been academic due to an absence of beetroot. I've remarked before on the absence of ye olde English grocers of green down East Street and among the stall-holders surrounding the Heffalump shopping centre, where plantain and cassava are abundant. I was contemplating a trip to New Covent Garden to purchase a net if beets when Louisa made an arrangement with the bloke at Crusons in Camberwell, paying seven quid for 12.5 kilos.

While I've been weighing the theoretical virtues of cumin and apples in the composition of borscht, Louisa's found a recipe for Fresh Beetroot Soup in The Great Green Cookbook by Rosamond Richardson (1996) that truly is, as described: 'the simplest of soups - a straight puree of freshly cooked beetroot, served with chopped dill and yoghurt.' Seeing as Lou omitted the dill, her soup had only a couple of ingredients: beetroots and stock.

Multiplying the quantities in the recipe book by six, Louisa scrubbed about 9kg of beets and trimmed their tops, leaving a stub so that the beets didn't bleed too much as they boiled. She placed the beets in the big pot, covering them with cold water, which she then brought to the boil and simmered for three quarters of an hour. Testing with a fork to see if they're tender, Louisa fished out the smaller beets first, leaving the bigger ones to cook through, and plunged them into a sink of cold water.

By this time Graham had turned up, so Louisa got him to peel the beets as they cooled enough to be handled. Their skins rub off easily enough after being boiled/cooled. As he peeled them, Lou roughly chopped the beets and returned them to the big pot, from which she had poured out the water in which they were cooked. Then she covered the chopped cooked beetroot with eight litres of Marigold stock mixed with four dessert spoons full of Marmite.

The idea to use Marmite came about because, traditionally, borscht is made with beef stock and we thought Marigold would be a bit light. Marks and Sparks do quite a nice dark vegetable stock concentrate, as it goes, and we might experiment with that when beetroot day rolls around again (which will be next week, 'cos we've still got about 3.5kg of beetroot). But, for today's soup, Louisa darkened the stock and deepened its flavour by adding dollops of Marmite into the Marigold bouillon mix. She liquidimated the soup once with the big stick mixer, added a further two litres of stock, and then she liquidizised it once more. And that's all!

According to Rosamond Richardson (whose book the late Linda McCartney called 'inspiring and practical'), 'beetroot is an epicurean vegetable and often severely underrated: just the smell of it as it boils is mouth-watering.' Enticing as the aroma was, just 21 bowls of simple borscht were served, each one garnished with a dollop of Greek yoghurt. Comments included, 'yummy'; 'scrummy' and 'gorgeously delicious'. Indeed, it was a bowl full of pure beet goodness. Thanks, Louisa.

Soup Maker: Louisa
Soup: Fresh Beetroot
Other ingredients: Greek yoghurt, Marmite
No. of bowls served: 21
Expenditure: £10.78
Donations: £21.58
Running balance: +£126.80