Barszcz is the Polish word for the beet soup that has generally entered English as borscht. There are a dizzying array of these soups in Eastern and Central European cooking, and more than a few varieties are to be found in this book. One of the "Lenten" (vegetarian) versions provided is as follows:
Boil a few mushrooms, some onions, and a variety of vegetables to taste. Boil or bake a few red beets separately, then chop them finely, poor in beet kvas (see recipe in the section on meat soups) and put it in a warm place for an hour or so. Then pour this liquid to taste over the cooked vegetables. Mix half a tablespoon of flour with half a quart of good sour cream and add to the soup, pouring in a little at a time and stirring. Finally, boil and pour into a dish with several tablespoons of boiled beets. The soup is best served with grated potatoes or hardboiled eggs cut into quarters. The soup can be served as above or, for stricter fasts, replace the flour and sour cream mixture with a little kasza and uszka made from mushrooms.
Because I'm not trying to make a vegan soup, we're going to go with the original version of the recipe... except that I will be using a bottled beet kvas (available from ethnic markets, which I am lucky to have access to here in the Detroit area) as even the 'quick way' to make it described in the section of the book on meat soups takes over two days.
Take half a pound of stale wholemeal bread and a small piece of sourdough rye bread cut into pieces. Put into a pot with six red beets, the larger ones cut lengthwise. Pour over boiled and then cooled water and put in a warm place. Keep the pot near the stove at night, and stir the contents during the day. In two days it will be ready for use.
With a modern stove, even this "quick method" would be difficult--I don't intend to keep my gas oven on all night, and while I'm sure there are other modern appliances that could produce the same effect (a yogurt maker, possibly?), I don't have any of those. So a bottled version will have to suffice, even if I'm sure it will slightly affect the quality. A "long method" is also described in the book, and is said to take about six days!
Ingredients as prepared:
- 1 jar of pre-made beet kvas/borscht base (I don't recall what brand it was)
- 1 can sliced beets
- 1 yellow onion, chopped
- Mushrooms (I used the remaining portion of a bag of frozen champignons), chopped
- Carrots (once again, I just used what was left in a bag of "baby" carrots; otherwise I would have chopped them)
- Green beans (it was about 1/2 c fresh, chopped)
- Flour
- Sour cream
Place the chopped onion, mushrooms, and other vegetables (but not the beets) in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, and boil until the vegetables are tender. Add the jar of beet kvas/borscht base and reduce heat, cook a few minutes. Mix a little flour with some sour cream (I did not use as much as called for in the original recipe above, because I didn't have that much left in the container of sour cream) and stir into the soup. Add can of sliced beets. Serve with a quartered hardboiled egg.
To hardboil the egg, I used the recipe also included in the book, though boiling an egg is quite simple: cover the eggs with cold water, bring to a boil, and boil for five minutes. The book remarks that the "American fashion" was to boil them for 15 minutes, so I may later do a post comparing the different suggestions made for how long the eggs should be boiled. But for these purposes, five minutes turned out great.
An interesting note: I have often encountered the assumption among other Americans (though primarily those not of Polish ancestry) that all Polish food is very meat-heavy, and that vegetarian or vegan options are not to be found in Polish (or more general Eastern and Central European) cooking. This is always an interesting conversation to me, because I think it reflects far more on what dishes have come to be considered "typically Polish" in American cooking than it does actual Polish food. Of course, this is common with many ethnic cuisines in the US--Italian-American food is, I'm told, much heavier than many of its Italian counterparts--but it also speaks to a shift in the religious landscape of the United States. Fasting practices among older generations of observant Catholics and among most Orthodox Christians call for avoiding meat and sometimes eggs and dairy for fairly significant portions of the year. By definition, this means that tradition cookery should include a fairly wide array of vegetarian and sometimes vegan options. Yet time and again, I find that many Americans can't conceive of the idea of Polish food without kielbasa, meat versions of stuffed cabbage (many don't realize that vegetarian versions even exist), and potato-and-cheese pierogi cooked in butter and served with chopped bacon.
