(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.

Day 10 Coney Island & PT

If yesterday was all about the places on my list that involved food, today was about the one thing that didn't. Unless you count fried clams and corn dogs as food. Today was the day we went to Coney Island.

Food wise it was a little unremarkable even if otherwise it was awesome. I ate a corn dog and fries at "Beer Island" immediately after arriving then we walked the full length of the board walk and got some food at a Russian place called Tatiana that had live fish in aquariums under there dance floor.

I ordered a quite good shrimp cocktail although looking at every one else's plates I wished I'd ordered something more complex. There whole fish looked great, hell even their salads looked amazing.

For dinner we went to a place called PT right next to our apartment. It's a very classy looking Italian place with a beautiful outside garden in the back. I was enticed by the promise of bronzino on their menu, a fish I love that we don't get much of on the west coast.

We where headed to a street festival later that night so we figured we'd order just a few lighter sides and leave some room for street food later. We shared a salad of assorted boiled beets, shaved carrots and a fantastic italian gorgonzola and an almost too cheesy (as if that's possible ) asparagus "gratin".

Kirstin got an eggplant crostini that looked awesome. I got a dish of chopped baby artichokes and home made sausage. Artichokes are by far my favorite food and something I order whenever it's on the menu. These where not the best I've had but they where well cooked, sliced and sauteed. Not exciting but so much better than some of the overcooked boring chokes I've eaten.

In the end we ate nothing at the street festival.

All Your Wheat Are Belong To Us

I had visions of going to Coney Island today and only having ice cream and deep fried oreos to eat so I decided to stock up on my typical snack while here: cereal with milk and blueberries. Once at Coney Island we stopped in at Tatiana, a Russian place along the boardwalk on the Brighton Beach end. I ordered the mini-pastry plate since I wasn't in the mood for a whole fried fish. The little canoli-like bites were good, but I liked the fruit that came around it best - blueberries, raspberries, and a strawberry.

Dinner was at PT near where we're staying. I highly recommend it. It was magical to go into the back garden (which really does have a garden) and sip red wine next to a lavender plant with fireflies starting to flicker as the sunlight disappeared. We ordered only starters, since that way you get to try more things, and the portions were delightfully big. I ate crostini with eggplant, asparagus with parmesan, and a beet salad that also came with raisins, pine nuts, thin strips of carrot, and gorgonzola. And since Damian is gluten-intolerant, I also got to eat the entire bread basket.

The wheat is all mine!


Beet salad with gorgonzola and raisins:


Asparagus with cheese:


Crostini:


The scenery at PT:

Eggs and Borscht (But Not At The Same Time)

Lunch today was at Ella Café. My order was pretty boring, I have to admit – two eggs over medium, toast, and side salad. What I received was exactly that. Nothing more, nothing less. Good, but nothing special (but still more palatable than lukewarm reheated spanakopita). Dinner, though, was at Odessa, a Russian place in the East Village. I tried a bit of the borscht, which was hearty and of course bright red. The Greek salad was heavy on the feta, which is not usually a problem, but I was really trying to save room for the pirogis. I tried the spinach pirogi, sweet potato pirogi, and the cheese pirogi. All with applesauce and sour cream. I could have eaten ten (and I think James did). As we were finishing up, the waiter was walking from light to light in the restaurant, unscrewing three of the four bulbs in each hanging fixture. “Mood lighting”, I guess, for when the place turns into a bar around 8pm. We took that as our cue to exit, and left satisfied and happy.

The last pirogi:

Day 5 Ella Cafe, Odessa, Oasis

This was the day we planned on going to the Natural History Museum but first we had to have breakfast/lunch. We ran into the same dietary obstacles as the night before only this time I was very cranky from lack of sleep and food.

After a long very unpleasant search up and down Bedford ave. we finally settled on a new agey overly modern place called Ella Cafe. I got a ordered the tomato soup with meatballs and a small green salad. Both of these where entirely bland and to add insult to injury the meatballs where strangely rubbery. I suppose places that advertise themselves as organic and healthy are just as suspect here as they are back home.

That night we had planned on having a dinner meeting to work on our Cultures of Wonder project. We needed a place we could sit and drink at for a long time. Where better for such a meeting than the legendary East Village Russian diner Odessa?

Between the four of us I think we ate close to fifteen pounds of food. I ordered the Odessa combination plate which came with a kielbasa sausage, a giant pile of sour kraut, a huge potato pancake and four perogies which I gave to Kirstin. I also ordered a bowl of borsht.

I know that of the two major Russian restaurants in the area Veselka is considered the better. I can’t really remember the difference from when I lived here but I can’t see how any home style Russian food could be better than what I ate that night. To a certain degree Russian food is simple enough that there really isn’t too much space for flare or nuance. At the end of the day a kielbasa is a kielbasa and a potato pancake is just a really good patty of hash browns. Still living on the west coast and not spending a lot of time in the Richmond district I’ve truly missed this type of food. This was a meal to rival any I’ve eaten in all my culinary adventures.

Later that night we headed back to Oasis. Once again I got the grilled lamb plate and ate the whole thing. I think there’s a good chance I ate more meet in a twenty four hour period this day than I ever have in my entire life.


Lamb Kabob from Oasis