(Vegetarian) Borsht!

I’ve decided to make a renewed effort to post to this blog every week. I’ll try to alternate between home cooking experiments and restaurant reviews.

Today’s home cooking experiment: Vegetarian Borsht.

I’m not sure how it came to mind but sometime Monday afternoon I was seized with the urge to eat Borsht and, since I’m yet to find a decent russian restaurant (or any at all really) in the east bay, I figured this was the perfect chance to try and make my own. Since I was cooking for Kirstin the borsht had to be vegetarian, which worried me a little. I was afraid the broth would be too one dimensional.

Before heading out to berkeley bowl I looked up a recipe online to see what it needed. I found what looked like a good recipe on cooksrecipes.com and set to and to my pleasant surprise I seemed to have most of the ingredients already in my fridge.

The recipe was fairly simple. Sauté onions,beets, carrot and parsnip with butter and oil in a large dutch over medium heat. When onions are softened add potatoes, garlic, canned tomatoes and broth. Simmer for twenty minutes. Stir in a little vinegar. Serve with chopped dill and sour cream.

Could it really be that simple? I was slightly wary. Weren't there some secret russian grandma tricks? In the end no there weren't. The only real problem I ran into was that I misjudged the quantity to such a degree that I had to switch everything over to a bigger pot before I could move on to the second step.

In the end me came out with a perfectly good giant pot of borscht that, thanks to the vinegar didn’t really suffer too much due to lack of meat. We’ve been eating it all week and I’m happy to say that it wasn’t until today (friday) that I got tired of eating it.

I’m not going to include my recipe for this since I pretty much followed this online one to the letter (vegetarian russian borscht). Maybe next time I’ll experiment a little with making a half batch and adding some other ingredients. Maybe kidney beans like they have at Odessa.