Replacement Chef moved somerville kitchen into the jardin to prepare an authentic Borscht. I followed like a paparazzi taking pictures and recording comments.
If it grows in a Saskatchewan garden, you throw it in. But you never include pepper, broccoli, tomatoes, or zucchini.
The hard vegetables (carrots and turnips as opposed to cabbage) get cooked first. And a good Borscht has to include cabbage; maybe not beets, but definitely cabbage.
These vegetables don't have flavour, so you have to inject flavour with lots of onions, garlic, salt and pepper.
The onions should be diced well. Stringy onions are no good for the soup. Onions are cooked in vegetable oil, you know why? And I guessed right - there was no olive oil in Saskatchewan when Ukrainians first came en masse to the province.
Appropriately, music by the talented Ukrainian Zeellia was playing making the experience even more authentic.
The jardin kitchen was set up with the portable cooking range (see Somerville Camp Upgrade) making the event 100% jardin-based.
The ingredient that no one remembers is vinegar. This cuts the sweetness of the beets and adds flavour. The most disgusting Borscht is one with no vinegar.
The beets are divided into two batches. Some are treated like hard vegetables and they are cooked first. Those should be cut into stripes.
But given that the heat destroys the colour, the rest are put at the end to keep the colour vibrant. Those are cut into small dices.
Dill are also like beets, they are put in first and then at the end again.
You use chicken broth and chicken bouillon cubes. Those make the broth thicker. The broth has to be &@#*@! intense.
And it sure looked intense when it was all done.
The red colour was so natural and beautiful. It tasted just perfect as far as I was concerned (well, nothing is perfect according to replacement chef).
Now what to do with all this Borscht? Babushka Kitty Sez came to the rescue...
Thank you replacement chef!
No comments:
Post a Comment