OLIA HERCULES
During my childhood in Ukraine, my family had only one
way of making borscht. Place oxtail in a heavy pot with cold water and
aromatics. Simmer for hours until the meat is tender and the stock rich and
viscous. Add the skimmed fat to a frying pan to soften the smazhennia,
a Ukrainian sofrito of diced onions and finely julienned carrots, until the
natural sugars are drawn out. Then comes the acidity: juicy tomatoes in the
summer; fizzy, funky fermented tomato purée in the winter; and, always, some
julienned beetroot—not too much, and only the light-colored borshevoy
buriak, which grow in the sandy soils of southern Ukraine. (“How can one
use this ghastly red beetroot—it dies the potatoes red, everything red!” my
late grandmother Lusia would say with deadly seriousness.) Boil large chunks of
potato and red kidney beans in the broth until soft, but cook shredded cabbage
only briskly, to retain a slight crunch. Season with dense homemade sour cream,
salt-cured pork pounded with garlic and salt, or, if you’re old-school,
umami-rich powders made from pulverized sun-dried tomatoes and gobies, a
bull-faced fish found in the Sea of Azov. The soup must be thick, so the spoon
stands up straight. Garnish with handfuls of dill, fermented in winter. Rye sourdough
or garlic pampushky bread, and often whole spring onions and
hot red chilies in the summer, are to be bitten into between each spoonful.
It wasn’t until I reached adulthood that I realized that
borscht could be made another way. I was just out of graduate school and
working as an assistant Russian literary translator. My main work was on
classics—Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter,” Platonov’s “The Foundation
Pit”—but my mentor also translated smaller articles on the side, and when he
didn’t have enough time to take on new assignments he would send them my way.
One day, an unusual one arrived in my in-box: a study, conducted by a Russian
academic, on the history of borscht. I don’t remember all the details of the
article, and my translation has been lost to time, but one description stayed
with me: borscht in the early nineteenth century, made for the Russian tsar,
consisted of three stocks blended together—one of veal, another of morel
mushrooms, and a third of goose and dried prune, with sour cherries used for
acidity instead of tomatoes, which were not yet common in Russian cooking. This
sounded like the most luxurious foundation of a borscht I could imagine—both
worlds apart from my family’s version and somehow similar, a balance of meaty
and sour and sweet.
In the years since, I’ve become a chef and cookbook author,
and in researching varieties of borscht I’ve discovered an astounding range of
preparations. The soup is eaten everywhere in Eastern Europe, from the formerly
Prussian Kaliningrad, where Russia now meets Poland, all the way through the
Caucasus, and extends into Iran and Central Asia, finishing somewhere out by
the eastern island of Sakhalin, near Japan, or the Kamchatka Peninsula, near
Alaska.
In Poland, for instance, they cook a soup in the Ukrainian
style, but also make a thinner Russian one and a gorgeous Christmas version, an
elegant and clear bright-red consommé with delicate dumplings called uzska (ears),
filled with porcini or wild mushrooms and sauerkraut. For sourness, apples are
often added to the stock, just as unripe Mirabelle plums and apricots are used
in some parts of Ukraine and Romania. In deep winter in Poland, Ukraine, and
the Baltics, zakwas, a fermented liquid made with beets and other
aromatics, is the foundation of choice. In Moldova, where maize is king, a
fermented starter is sometimes made with polenta and bran water infused with
sour cherry leaves or even young cherry branches, to cut through a fatty pork
stock. Georgians and Azerbaijanis, as always, put their own delicious spin on
things, adding either fresh, chopped red chili or hot chili flakes and lots of
chopped fresh cilantro and dill.
Beef, well-marbled and on the bone, is one of the most cited
sources for stock-making, but pork stocks seem to have the most variations,
with versions made of anything from simple fresh cuts to smoked ribs, ham
hocks, and sausages in Hungary and Poland to crunchy pork ears in Ukraine.
Lacking pork or beef, you can always use a wiry rooster; its tough meat might
stick between your teeth, but its bones will help to create the most flavorsome
of broths. The only thing I haven’t encountered to date is a seafood-based
borscht. Maybe one exists in Kamchatka, home to the world’s largest crabs and
other oceanic delicacies? If you have a recipe, please, do speak up.
More surprising than the many carnivorous varieties is the
overwhelming number of vegetarian recipes, born of scarce times when people had
to make do without meat. Root vegetables like celeriac, parsnip, and turnips
were often used to give flavor and body, and dry mushrooms were popular in
forest-dense areas. In spring, across Eastern Europe, those heavy tubers would
be swapped for young beet tops, sorrel, wild garlic, nettles, soft herbs,
spring onions, or garden peas, all of which would contribute to a widespread
creation of a completely different, gentler soup called green borscht. It is
fresh and zingy, enriched with a garnish of chopped hard-boiled eggs. Ice-cold
bright-red beetroot consommé, originating in Lithuania, but also popular today
in Poland, is garnished with chopped radishes and cucumbers to add the
crunch and kefir or buttermilk for that desired sour note. For sweetness, among
those who managed to escape the U.S.S.R., even ketchup has been adopted with glee.
Variations are dictated by the land, weather, and local
traditions, but also by circumstance: people from different cultures
intermarry; families are both willingly and forcibly moved. In my sixteen years
in the U.K., I have often heard stories that begin with “I’m Czech, but my
Crimean Jewish grandmother . . . ”; “Our borscht in Mennonite
Manitoba by way of western Ukraine is . . . ”; “My Iranian dad loved
this version of my Russian mother’s borscht . . . ” In recent years,
my own father started grating ginger into his borscht, convinced that my
five-year-old son, who is half Thai, might prefer it with an Asian twist. It
turned out that dad’s gingery addition did not spoil the soup. It just added a
subtle hint of warmth, so appealing that I, too, now add some to my pot. I
still, however, always seek out the paler “candy” beets, fearful of what
babushka Lusia would say if she ever saw that my borscht potatoes were dyed
that screaming purple-red.
_____
Babushka Lusia’s Ukrainian Winter Borscht
Serves four.
4-5 lbs. oxtail
2 onions
3 large carrots
1/2 celeriac or 2 stalks of celery
4 allspice berries, roughly crushed
10 peppercorns
2 bay leaves
2 beetroots, peeled (preferably the pale variety, but the
red kind will do)
1/2 small green cabbage, sliced
14-oz. can chopped tomatoes
14-oz. can red kidney beans
4 medium potatoes, peeled
1 clove garlic
1/2 bunch dill, chopped
Sour cream or crème fraîche to serve (optional)
- Fill
a large pot with cold water. Halve one onion and add it to the pot.
Roughly chop two carrots and the celeriac and add them, along with the
allspice, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Add the oxtail and a good pinch of
salt.
- Bring
the water to the boil. Skim the froth and discard it. Turn the flame to
low and simmer the stock for two to three hours, until the meat separates
easily from the bone.
- While
the stock is simmering, peel and finely dice the other onion. Roughly
grate the remaining carrot. Cut the beetroot into matchsticks.
- Skim
some of the beef fat with a ladle off the top of the stock and pour it
into a large frying pan. Turn the heat to medium and wait for the fat to
start sizzling. Add your onion and sauté it gently, stirring from time to
time, until it softens and starts to caramelize. Then add the carrot and
cook for about five minutes. Season with salt and taste—it should be
well-seasoned.
- Add
the beetroot to the pan and cook for a few minutes. Finally, add the
tomatoes, cook for a couple of minutes, and taste. If it tastes too sour,
add a pinch of sugar.
- Drain
the beef stock into a large bowl. Reserve the oxtail, but discard the
rest. Pour the stock back into the pot with the oxtail.
- Add
the contents of the frying pan to the stockpot with the potatoes and cook
for seven minutes over medium-high heat. Then add the cabbage and cook for
another three minutes. The potatoes should be soft and the cabbage al
dente. Finally, grate the garlic straight into the pot and give it a vigorous
stir.
- Serve
the borscht with plenty of chopped dill, some sour cream on the side, and
some good-quality bread for dipping. The soup will taste even better the
next day.
_____
- Olia
Hercules is the author of two cookbooks, “Mamushka” and “Kaukasis: A
Culinary Journey Through Georgia, Azerbaijan & Beyond.”
_____
De THE NEW YORKER, 07/12/2017
Imagen: Growing up eating a Ukrainian version of borscht,
rich with oxtail meat and beets, I knew nothing of the soup’s astounding
variations.
Photograph by Joe Woodhouse
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