and here’s this week’s recipe.

I was doing some sort of vaguely Russian cooking last week after deciding to do something fun with buckwheat for a dinner party and so after finding/cobbling-together-from-lots of-other-recipes a rather good looking recipe for buckwheat blinis I decided to try and do more food to fit with the theme.

No Russian meal (in my head at least) would be complete without some sort of awesome soup and after looking around it didn’t seem so hard to make Borsht and so I HAD to give it a go.

As it happened it turned out rather well and so I thought I’d share the recipe so here it is! The real thing should really have beef in it, but a couple people on the night didn’t eat red meat so I changed the recipe to an all vegetable version.

a bulb of garlic

a large onion

a stalk of celery

a carrot

a leek

a bunch of dill and a bay leaf or two

300 ml or so of stock (I used chicken, but beef is probably better)

about a kilo of beets

50ml of vinegar

a couple spoons of sugar

half a red cabbage

First off you want to make a brand new vegetable stock so chop up all the vegetables apart from the beets and cabbage into chunks (small for onions and garlic, big for everything else). Heat up some butter in the bottom of a large pot and then gently fry the onions and garlic until translucent and smelling wonderful then add the rest of vegetables. Fry the whole lot gently for 5 minutes or so and then add the meat stock and a bit of salt. After the whole pan has got back to a simmering heat add about a litre and a half of boiling water and the herbs. Adjust the heat until it’s just off the boil and stays that way and then leave it be.

Wash the beets well and shred them coarsely with a cheese grater, add the vinegar, the sugar and just enough water to cover it and then cook it on a gently simmering heat for 45 minutes. Then sit back and relax for a bit (alternatively make mayonnaise and blini batter and coffee and chocolate and bean paste and slice pickles and lay the table) and then you’re ready to put everything together.

Strain the stock so that you’re just left with a wonderful smelling liquid, shred the cabbage and mix it all with the beets and the liquid they’ve been cooking in. Cook it on a low heat for half and hour (don’t let it come to the boil), salt and pepper it to taste and then you’re done! Serve it up with a plenty of sour cream and be prepared to be eating the leftovers for days and days and days… cooking big amounts rocks!