Today’s post was supposed to be pictures from yesterday, which we declared “T1 Day” and included a family trip to the park, present opening, and a baby covered in whipped cream, but I woke up this morning to find that my D drive (the drive where all of my pictures are stored) has disappeared! I’m going to have to wait until TH gets home late tonight to figure out what happened.*

I despise this picture, as borsch photographed late at night with one on-camera flash just doesn’t work, but if you’ve been wanting to make authentic Polish borsch I happen to have a Krakow cookbook gifted to me by TH’s family, and so I have a recipe for you. I felt like it was a lot of work, and I didn’t end up liking it, but I don’t like beets so the odds I would like it was really slim from the get-go.

I’ve transcribed the recipe below as-is in my cookbook. I didn’t make ravioli as it was described as “a very time-consuming activity which sometimes takes several hours”, so we added hard boiled eggs to our borsch.

Red Borsch (Beetroot Soup)

from The best of Polish cuisine in Krakow

Ingredients
Over 1.5 lb meat on the bone (beef, veal, or chicken)
Soup vegetables (2 carrots, 1 parsnip, piece of celeriac, 1 small leek)
4 pt water
1 lb small beetroots
1 tbsp apple vinegar or 1/2 teaspoonful citric acid
2 tbsp marjoram
2 tbsp sugar
Several garlic cloves
Salt
Black Pepper
Optional: 2/3 cup thick sour cream if you’d like to make white borsch

1. Wash and scrub the beetroots well using a brush, put them in boiling water, cook (for about 40 minutes), drain off, and cool.
2. Peel the cool beetroots and grate with a vegetable grater.
3. Put the rinsed meat in a large pot of water and bring to the boil over a high high. Then reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer.
4. When the meat is almost tender add the peeled and rinsed vegetables and the cloves of garlic and cook everything until tender.
5. Remove the cooked meat and vegetables from the stock and add the grated beetroots, citric acid (or vinegar), sugar, salt and pepper and for for several minutes over a low heat.
6. Strain the borsch using a colander and season with marjoram.

This is a clear soup served with ravioli, but it can also be thickened with cream and then served with boiled potatoes (separately cooked), kidney beans or quartered, hard-boiled eggs.

 

*If any of my clients are reading DO NOT WORRY! My files back up every night and are stored offsite, so they do exist, I just don’t have the technical know-how to access them .:)

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