Just What the Doctor Ordered

Just What the Doctor Ordered

Though just about everyone has heard of Russia’s most famous soup, borshch, few people know that it was named after a weed. The borshchevik, as it was called, was the universal ingredient used by early Russian peasants when they made soup.

It was only later, in the 10th and 11th centuries, that people started adding its more famous ingredient, beetroot, then extensively grown in southern and central Russia.

You have to hand it to beetroot. It’s been around for ages — and not just as a food product. The 11th century Arab philosopher and physician Avicenna sung the praises of beetroot and its healing properties in his works. Early Russian homeopaths followed suit and recommended the use of beetroot to cure tuberculosis, scurvy and toothache.

Modern medics, meanwhile, have proved that beetroot is very useful for curing liver problems, cardiovascular diseases and anemia.

Beetroot juice possesses another property, greatly valued by the fairer sex — it keeps the skin fresh. Little wonder that Russian beauties — both peasants and high society dames — used it on their cheeks before modern cosmetics became available.

Russian peasants also considered beetroot effective as an insecticide. During the babye leto (Indian summer) there was even a ceremony where they buried mosquitoes and flies embedded in beetroot.

A soup cooked with such a valuable vegetable was bound to be a success in Russia: just one plate of borshch provided health and beauty, and also protected people from those vicious northern mosquitoes.

Apart from that, hot red steaming borshch is a decoration for the dinner table in itself. It also fits perfectly into the Russian tradition of starting a meal with a hot, appetizing soup.

But even though borshch took its place of honor in Russian cuisine long ago, it was first invented in Ukraine, which used to be the main beetroot-growing area in the Russian Empire. The classic Russian borshch is called malorossiisky (‘little Russian’ borshch, from the word Malorossiya — the old Russian name for Ukraine).

Peasants of northern Russian and Siberia grew mostly cabbage and therefore mostly ate shchi (cabbage soup). For them, borshch was a special dish cooked during festivals. Anyone from the village who could afford borshch every day had to be rich enough to be the envy of the neighborhood.

Perhaps for this reason, in the 19th century borshch was popular with the creative intelligentsia. Such celebrities as poet Alexander Pushkin and satirist Nikolai Gogol were known for savoring their borshch till the last drop.

Russian rulers also treated themselves to this exquisite meal — Empress Catherine the Great ate her borshch out of hand-made silver plates given her by Cossacks from Zaporozhye in Ukraine. Alexander II ate borshch from Saxony porcelain.

Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II, preferred simple soldier’s shchi to borshch. At the very beginning at least, Little Russian soup didn’t have much luck with the Bolshevik rulers either. The man who ordered Nicholas’ assassination, Vladimir Lenin, also opted for the more ‘democratic’ shchi. As Russian Life readers already know (see December, 1995 issue), Stalin favored mushroom soups.

Only under Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev, a renowned connoisseur of his national cuisine, did borshch begin its renaissance. It was Khrushchev who ordered Kremlin cooks to add cold sour cream to hot borshch. As a result it became a fashionable meal at Soviet restaurants and in high-ranking nomenklatura homes.

Borshch accompanied Khrushchev on all his foreign trips and that’s probably why it became one of the most popular Soviet meals in the West. Not surprisingly, many film directors used borshch with sour cream to add local color to their spy movies. You can do the same in your own home just by following our recipe.

Here’s the Recipe:

Ingredients:

For every 1 1/4 pounds of beef:

1 lb. potato

1 lb. cabbage

10 oz. beetroot

1/2 cup of tomato puree

1/2 cup of sour cream

1 celery root

1 bunch of parsley

1 leek

1 onion

1.5-2 tbsp. flour

1 tbsp. butter

1.5 tbsp. pork fat

2-3 cloves of garlic.

Salt, pepper, vinegar, spices, bay leaf and fresh tomatoes to taste.

First prepare an ordinary meat broth, using 5-6 pints of water for every 1 1/4 lb. of beef. Any fat which comes to the surface during boiling should be creamed off with a perforated spoon and set aside for stewing the beetroot. Strain the broth.

Cut the roots, leek and beetroot into strips. Stew the beetroot for 20-30 minutes, adding the fat from the broth, tomato puree, vinegar and a little of the broth itself.

Fry the chopped roots, leek and onion lightly in the butter, mix with flour, dilute with a little broth and bring to a boil.

Add the potatos, chopped into large cubes, coarsely chopped cabbage, stewed beetroot and salt to the original meat broth and boil for 10-15 minutes. Then add the sauteed roots etc., bay leaf, white and red pepper. Boil the soup until the potato and cabbage are cooked.

Sprinkle pork fat, grated with finely-chopped garlic, on the ready borshch. Add fresh tomatoes cut into segments and bring back to the boil. Then let stand for 15-20 minutes.

Serve with sour cream and finely chopped fresh parsley.