Clear borscht - a first recipe
- rosemary
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
"the pride of old Polish cooking" Maria Lemnis
I'll be up front here and say I'm not inspired by this one. I'm pretty sure I did borscht as most of us know it - a complicated meat and vegetable soup founded on beetroot - long, long, ago, but here I am with a first recipe for a clear borscht, the version of which I have in front of me, with no picture or recipe online and no comments in the book. I chose this picture of The Spruce Eats recipe from Barbara Rolek for Beet soup (Barszcz czyzty czerwony) because the recipe most closely resembled my first recipe.
I'm still with Beverley Sutherland Smith in my first recipe trawl through my bookshelves, and this is the book - The Complete Beverley Sutherland Smith. Well the first thing to say is that the title is obviously a misnomer. It is not her complete repertoire. And she recognises this herself - well sort of - in the introduction:
"While no book can be truly called 'complete', this book covers a large range of dishes"
So I suspect her definition of 'complete' in the context of such a cookbook title is not the same as mine. To me it kind of means that this is everything that the cook in question has written or created. And it obviously isn't because it neither includes everything she had written elsewhere before this book, or everything that she was later to publish. No - her definition, is I think, her idea of what every cook should know about cooking via a series of recipes which comprehensively cover all the possibilities and techniques. For her:
"The dish had to be worth inclusion because it was an important basic recipe, a classic dish or an unusual and creative one, but the main concern was 'how did it taste.'
I think she probably does cover the aim of covering "so many basic ideas, techniques and recipes" - well in a limited sense in terms of world food - although that is not to say that there are not dishes from other countries included. or dishes with a touch of elsewhere - but it shows its age in some ways - it was published in 1987 - and yet it is also surprisingly modern as well as classic. In some ways she is a little like Jane Grigson in being able to adapt a classic to a more adventurous audience.
Before I get back to the first recipe, I was also struck by these words in her Introduction:
"But of course each one of us has a completely different approach when writing, which reveals the personality of the cook and the way she feels about food. ... I believe this is a cookbook for anyone who cares about my special style of cooking, as I have only written recipes which I can enjoy eating myself."
'Special style of cooking' - it's hard to identify her special style, but then maybe that's not surprising. I suppose in some cases it's easy to identify a style of cooking but mostly it's more a case of a style of writing is it not? Many of those last century gurus - Elizabeth David, Claudia Roden, Robert Carrier ..., didn't even create most of the recipes in their books, they collected them. So OK they chose them which would indeed have been down to their own tastes, but it was not their 'style of cooking'. Or am I misdefining those words? Whether we cook something we have invented or from a recipe I guess it's really the choice of what we cook which defines the 'style'.
The Introduction is pretty brief - six short paragraphs that don't even take up a whole page, and which largely concentrate on how the book was conceived, written, recipe tested and so on. Here, as in all her books, I do not actually have a picture in my head of what this lady - whose recipes I respect, love even - is like.
Maybe, therefore, in the case of Beverley Sutherland Smith, it's more a case of her not having a style of writing or presenting that jumps out at you as something original and all her own. But then I have never attended one of her cooking classes. Some recipes have a few comments about how you could serve or vary the dish. Some have a little bit of background if it's a 'classic' dish - e.g. Cock-a-leekie, but even then, not always. My Clear borscht recipe has nothing.
So I set out to find something - and did not really find much, other than that this particular variation of borscht - a clear soup - really just a beetroot broth - is a Polish dish with that name - Barszcz czyzty czerwony - and that it is often served on Christmas Eve, and often with mushroom dumplings within it as in this version of Barszcz Czerwony from The Polonist.
According to this writer, the soup absolutely has to be made with fermented beetroot juice. Hard to find but this lady insists:
"Some home cooks try to use vinegar as a substitute, but please don’t go that route. The difference in taste is massive. Instead of subtle, earthy notes of beets, you get an unpleasant acidic hit of vinegar – not cool." The Polonist
And indeed Beverley does use vinegar - as do many other cooks. Felicity Cloake does go to the bother of making her own fermented beet juice, but found it an unpleasant experience and had two other suggestions:
"a respectable alternative can be made by bringing a pan of grated beetroot, stock and lemon juice to the boil, allowing it to sit for half an hour, and then straining.
The resulting liquid has a less complex flavour than the real thing, but does the job of adding tang to Catherine's soup, and at considerably less cost to one's airing cupboard."
Or: "a mixture of sour cream and flour, added at the end of cooking time to thicken the soup." but she didn't like this and, like Beverley went for vinegar. I should note however, that Felicity is making the full meaty, vegetable kind of borscht - a meal in a soup, not the clear version.
Beverley's recipe is actually very simple - Cook grated beetroot in beef or chicken stock, strain, add vinegar, sugar, pepper (cayenne) and salt. Reheat, add more grated beetroot, to give it a brilliant red colour for a minute or so, strain again and serve - she suggests with a small dollop of sour cream.
I don't think it's something I'm dying to make however. I have made the more filling meaty version in the past - inspired by various Eastern European friends from long ago - who would serve this up to us. And I liked it, but it was really a bit of a process. Although this is much simpler - well - beetroot is not my all time favourite vegetable, however trendy it has become.
If you feel like giving it a go you could try this version from Eating European. Her version of Clear Polish borscht certainly looks striking.
One more Beverley Sutherland Smith book to go - A Taste in Time - a very heavily used cookbook for me back in the day. She is still one of my favourite cooks and there are several of her recipes that I still use.
I have not cooked much from this book. Perhaps its size and it's teacherly tone have put me off. Maybe it's because it does indeed cover all the usual bases, and I guess I feel I have moved on from those. Which is very stupid of me. I should use it more. It's certainly not going to be thrown out.
THE FRIDGE - last night's dinner shown here - Jane Grigson's Tomato and oatmeal tart - delicious by the way, although you won't find the recipe online - it's from her Vegetable Book - did not make any inroads into the fridge problem - well the last inch or so of cream in one bottle, and the end of one bit of tasty cheese. Moreover - the half of the tart shown here is now in cluttering up the fridge and waiting for reheating - for Monday's dinner I think. I didn't diminish the number of tomatoes in the fridge either, as I bought some more in the morning.
Nice bottle of Aldi red - a tempranillo from Spain - by the way.
YEARS GONE BY
January 17
2025 - Behind my pantry doors
2023 - Nothing
2021 - Missing
2019 - Greg and Lucy Malouf's New Feast
How you feel about food is the question and this is essentially what food writers mull over morosely - sorry mostly! 🤣