From Russia With Beets

Hey there!

It's wintertime in Canada, and in case you haven't heard, it's been pretty damn chilly since the end of November. And it's at this time of year that we pretty much NEED the kind of food that sticks to one's insides like tasty, edible spackle. Now, there are numerous cuisines that come from Northern climes and aren't always well-known or given their due in popular culture and food trends. I already blogged about one Czech comfort dish many moons ago, now I want to move to the northeast, to our friends in Russia. Russian (and by extension Ukranian, Lithuanian and some aspects of Polish) cuisine isn't exactly en vogue (has it ever been?) and yet it features utterly delicious, hearty and nourishing fare, well-suited for the climate in which it originates and in which the mighty Canuck lives.

Now, this post happens to coincide with the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, even though we made the meal back in late November (Xmas and moving were in between then and now, don't judge me!). This post is by no means a plug for the Olympics or for Russia itself, because they're a freakin' sh*tshow this year and should never have been awarded to such a repressive country as Russia. OK, getting back off my soapbox and back to the food. Because they do have tasty food.

One of the stalwarts of Russian cuisine is Borscht. Borscht is a stew and/or soup (or "stoup" as my wife likes to call it) that is pretty much always based on beets. It comes in both hot and cold forms, and both are fairly well known. Now, root vegetables are always a favourite in the colder months. They keep for a fairly long time, they're hearty and they do a great job at thickening stews and soups, allowing you to make the "stick-to-your-ribs" goodness a body craves at this time of year. Beets have the added bonus of being delicious with a unique flavour profile no other vegetable can match. They're sweet, earthy and rich, not to mention versatile; you can use them as the base of a salad, slice and fry them into chips, pickle them, and so on. And, of course, make a whack of Borscht!

 I found this recipe for Borscht on the Internet thanks to Martha Stewart (don't judge me) and adapted it to my tastes and desires.

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Hot Borscht

Ingredients

- vegetable or olive oil
- 3 large beets
- 1 tbsp butter
- 2 potatoes, peeled and diced
- 1 onion, peeled and chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/4 cup dried mushrooms (see note below), or 1/2 cup fresh mushrooms, sliced or roughly chopped
- 2 stalks celery with leaves
- 1 apple, cored
- 1 cup beef stock (or vegetable stock if you want it to be vegetarian), keep some extra in case you need it
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
- 1/4 of one lemon
- fresh dill, chopped
- sour cream or yogurt

Directions

- Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Soak dried mushrooms for 5-10 minutes. Once done, chop mushrooms, reserving the liq
- Coat beets in vegetable oil and wrap tightly in foil. Please on baking sheet and roast for about an hour, until beets are tender (simply prick with a toothpick, if it goes through beets easily, they're done). Set aside until cool enough to handle.

- Peel skins off beets (they should just slide off) and chop roughly.

- While beets are cooling, in a large pot, heat 2 tbsp of oil.
- Sauté potatoes, onions, garlic, mushrooms, apples and celery.
- Stir in stock and beets, bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer.



From boring ol' whitish-brown...

... to delicious silky red! Just add beets!

- Simmer the soup for 20-30 minutes. Stir in maple syrup and squeeze in lemon juice.
- Simmer for another 10 minutes.
- Using an immersion blender, blend soup until smooth.
- Serve soup garnished with fresh dill and a dollop of sour cream/yogurt.

For the other part of the meal, we had Beef Stroganoff, but I wasn't as impressed with that as I expected to be. Regardless, here's the basic recipe I used/adapted (went with sirloin instead of tenderloin). My suggestion is to get a big ol' loaf of your favourite crusty bread or maybe pumpernickel and eat the soup with that. Probably less likely to cause a food coma as well.

Preparing for hibernation? Here's your meal!

Dos vedanya Tovarisch!

PS: If a 5-month old likes it, you know it's good!



Agog at the goodness!

Pickle now, crunch later...

Hi there!

I've talked about my love of pickled foods more than a few times, but I haven't really had a chance to go crazy with the pickle-making until a couple of weeks ago.

Pickling veggies for me is almost the culinary equivalent of making art from garbage. I was on a mad fridge cleaning mission and was getting a bit frustrated with all the dairy and other food going into the trash (note to self, cottage cheese is only a good idea if you KNOW you're going to eat it right away). When I got to the crisper drawer, I was faced with shrivelling cucumbers, wrinkling peppers, limpening carrots and (very slowly) imploding golden beets. It was too late for the liquified celery, but I was determined to salvage as much of this vegetable matter as possible. Best way to give new life to old veg? Pickle those suckers!

Now, traditional store-until-zombie-apocalypse pickling is basically the same process as "fridge pickling" with an extra step: You bathe the full Mason jars in boiling water to create a seal and disinfect the jars. Now, that doesn't work for me for two reasons: first, I don't have that many Mason jars, and second, I'm terrified that the boiling water will somehow cause the jars to shatter (I admit it, I have a bit of a neurosis about broken glass ever since I was a kid and had a tiny shard of glass stuck in my foot for months and finally had to dig it out with a pair of scissors. Eep). So, until I get over my glass neuroses,  it's a fridge-pickler's life for me, yo-ho!

It was also a grand opportunity to do some vinegar clean-up, using bits of nearly empty bottles of white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, plain ol' white vinegar, tarragon vinegar, cider vinegar, and even a little balsamic for good measure. Now, this was done mainly out of necessity since I was low on the white wine vinegar I'd normally use, not to mention the white vinegar I would use if out of white wine vinegar, and in the end I had to buy more anyway...

But for the sake of putting out a recipe that makes some sort of sense, I'll stick with only two kinds of vinegar in these recipes, but trust me, they'll still turn out great!

Also, since the most common form of pickled veg are cucumbers, I'm calling those 'pickles', because we all do.




These jars were much fuller two weeks ago...



Pickled Golden Beets and Carrots

Makes one small jar's worth.

Ingredients

- 2-3 carrots, peeled and sliced
- 2-3 golden beets (instructions for beets to follow) - you can use 'regular' beets, but everything will be tinted by the beets - I find the colour profile of golden beets with carrots very bright and cheering.
- 1 half onion, peeled and sliced
- 3-4 sprigs fresh thyme
- 2 cups water
- 2 cups white vinegar
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 1/2 tsp pickling spice (the spice mix I had included allspice - probably too much of it, coriander seeds, cinnamon pieces, cloves, mustard seeds, and peppercorns) - you might want to pick through the spice to make sure you aren't using too much of one element over the other.
- 1 tbsp kosher salt (depending on how salty you like it - you can add more if you want it industrial-strength salty)
- pinch of red chili flakes (a little heat makes this even better)
- 1/2 tsp sugar (or more if you want it really sweet)
NOTE: As with most spice blends and trying new things out, sometimes it's best to try your own ideas out and see how they go. I'd love to do some pickling using various dried chilis like guajillo, pasilla and mulatto.

Directions

 - First, you want to roast your beets for about 10-15 minutes at 350 degrees farenheit. Once cooked, set the, aside to cool. Once cool enough, peel the skins off beets. You may get orange fingers as a result. Live with it.

- Next, slice your beets. A lot of recipes call for whole beets, but this is small batch pickling and slices are better for this recipe.

- Place carrots, beets, onion and thyme in a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid.
- In a saucepan, combine remaining ingredients to make pickling liquid and bring to a boil.

- Remove from heat and carefully pour pickling liquid over veggies in the jar. If there's too much liquid and not all the spices are coming out, spoon them out and add to the jar.

- Let cool without a lid until lukewarm. Close lid and refrigerate for an hour or so before serving.



Pickled Orange and Yellow Peppers

Ingredients

- 1 orange Bell pepper, cleaned and sliced into rings
- 1 yellow Bell pepper, cleaned and sliced into rings
- 1 half onion, peeled and sliced
- 3-4 sprigs fresh thyme

The rest of the Ingredients and the Directions are exactly the same as with the Beets and Carrots.


Garlic Dill Pickles

I made a different pickling liquid for the cucumbers than the first two, mostly because dill pickles aren't supposed to be sweet!

Ingredients

- 3-4 Kirby cucumbers, cleaned and cut into spears (quartered length-wise, you may want to cut them in half, depending on their size)
- 3-4 garlic cloves, sliced
- 1/4 cup fresh dill
- 1/4 tsp pickling spice
- 1 cup tarragon vinegar
- 1 cup white vinegar
- 2 cups water
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 2 tbsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp dried tarragon
- pinch red chili flakes

Directions

It's the process is the same as the other pickles, but I have a couple of notes. First, you might noticed that garlic shows up twice as an ingredient. That's because you want the garlic slices in the jar with the cukes and dill before adding the pickling liquid, but you also want to flavour the liquid with more garlic, hence the crushed garlic clove. Because more garlic! Secondly, you might be wondering what's up with the tarragon (vinegar and herb). Well, all I can say is try it. I think it adds beautiful flavour to the pickles.

Otherwise, it the same process of: slice veg, put in jar, boil pickling liquid, pour into jar, let jar cool, refrigerate to give veggies crunch and that's that!

Clockwise from top left: Pickled Orange and Yellow Peppers, Pickled Golden Beets and Carrots, Garlic Dill Pickles


As an added bonus snack on ridiculously hot days, you should toast some rye bread, spread some plain yogurt on top, and put some of the Beet-Carrot Pickles and/or Pickled Peppers on top of that and enjoy!



Awesome Summer snacking

 And there you go! Get out there and turn your old veggies into deliciousness!

Cheers!