A big bowl
of borshch…
It’s lucky
that Slava feels like cooking, because I don’t.
His specialty is borshch soup, and he puts into it about every ingredient
he can find. This version has 14
ingredients, he says – beet root, beet tops, onions, garlic, carrots, peppers, celery,
cilantro, green onions, spices, and more.
Out of personal preference he leaves out three key ingredients found in
most Russian versions: beef, potatoes, and a splash of vinegar. Slava makes a vat of this vegetable soup to
last through many meals, so for the near future you can imagine us having
borshch, borshch, borshch. It’s a good
thing I’ve become Russian enough to truly appreciate borsch.
Borshch is
almost a meal in itself. Serve it with a
few slices of black bread and some cheese, and you’re done.
Our
breakfasts are similarly simple. I look
forward to getting good fresh tvorog in Russia – the Americanized version
called “farmer’s cheese” isn’t the same.
Slava buys that in the U.S.,
however a product closer to tvorog is strained yogurt, something similar to
Greek yogurt, except that tvorog has curds like cottage cheese. You need only to toast some dark bread, and
breakfast is ready.
We haven’t
yet had lunch. A noontime meal would
interfere with napping all day. Putting food in the tummy at noon is like
having a lot of food at 10:00 pm.
Breakfast time here is the equivalent of dinner time at home, and dinner
time here is equivalent to breakfast time at home. I’ll regard myself as being over jet lag the
first day my stomach accepts lunch.
2 comments:
I was with you right up to the first two ingredients, beet root and beet tops. I’ve always wanted to like beets but I just don’t. What can I do about this?
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