Soup-er Sunday -- Winter Borscht

The Little Mouths are Russian, and having traveled there 4 times, I am a great lover of all things Russian.  More so than the Little Mouths, actually. 

On my first trip to Russia I packed literally a suitcase full of food.  Granola bars, fruit by the foot, hand-i-snacks and peanut butter crackers...you get the picture.  I was terrified I'd starve to death, which was so silly (they don't call me Big Mama, for nothing.)  But when I got there, I realized I LOVED the food, for the most part.  I never really warmed up to cabbage, but the pork cutlets coated in cheese with fried potatoes...the breads, the yogurts, cheeses and OMG, the ice cream.  With dark chocolate shavings.  They must have such happy cows in Russia to produce that creamy, rich...YUM.

Anyway, the one thing I never, ever tried was Borscht.  Last night I was flipping through an old New York Times Cookbook  (my copy is from 1961 and was my mother's) and came across a recipe.  I mostly stuck with the ingredients, but changed up the method a bit in an effort to add richness to the soup and ,truth be told, cover up the taste of the cabbage.

It's kind of an all day, tedious affair.  I started working on it at 10 AM and I think it was done around 4PM.  There's a lot of chopping and peeling, but I often enjoy that.  It's basic and chopping and dicing slow down my internal tick-tock that by the end of the week has sped up to near lighting speed.   

This soup, almost a stew, is a good way to use up all those winter veggies as you can sub in turnips, parsnip or even celery root.  Here's what I used.

Winter Borscht

1-1.5 pounds beef (I used oxtail)
1 cup white wine
1.5 quarts water
2 onions (one quartered and one shredded)
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 cups shredded roasted beets
3/4 cup shredded carrots
3/4 cup shredded rutabaga
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 Roma tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 small head of cabbage, shredded
3 bay leaves
2 pounds of potatoes

Salt and Pepper

Sour cream and fresh chopped dill for garnish

I do love any recipe that allows me to use my favorite enameled cast iron pot from Calphalon.  The last time I was at the Chef's Outlet, there were still some to be had at a fraction of the price of their Le Creuset counter part. 

I heated up the pot on top of the stove, added a little olive oil and browned the oxtail.  I added two carrots and an onion, salt and pepper and put the lid on and simmered for about 2 hours.  I was busy making mac-n-cheese for the freezer and lost track of time.  It probably could have cooked for less time.

In the meantime, I washed and roasted 6 small beets, with the skin on, with salt and olive oil at 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until tender.  I let them cool then shredded them in my food processor along with the seeded tomatoes, cabbage, remaining carrots, onion and ratbag. 

I removed the beef and set aside and strained the beef stock.  Discard the carrots and onions. Bring the beef stock back to a boil and add in all the veggies and any collected juice from the beets as they roasted.  Whisk a cup of broth with the tomato paste and add back into the simmering pan with the beef and bay leaves.

Simmer for an hour or two until all of the veggies are tender.  Remove the bay leaves. I removed the meat and scredded it and ran my "blender on a stick" around the pan a few times to puree the soup a bit. Little mouths always prefer a soup to be smooth, if possible. 

Dice the potatoes, cook separately and add to the Borscht just before serving otherwise they will be mushy

Garnish with a bit of sour cream and fresh dill if you have some.  We didn't.  The dill at the supermarket looked all limp and yellow, so I threw in a bit of freeze dried that I had in the cabinet. 

Then I removed the meat and bones and strained the broth. 

While the soup was simmering away in the pot, I had hoped we wouldn't really like it all that much.  It WAS a lot a work.  But it was really good and got thumbs up from Big Mama and Little Mouths.