food detective

Passport & Plate - Glague soup

Russian Federation | Friday, March 14, 2014 | 3 photos

Ingredients
Leaves of glague (you can take sorrel or spinach) – 200 g
Meat or chicken broth – 1,5 l
Yellow onion – 1 pc
Carrot – 1 pc
Potato – 2 pcs
Boiled eggs – 2 pcs
Vegetable oil – 2-3 ts
Sour cream
Salt

 

How to prepare this recipe
It is a very simply recipe. Put salt in a broth. Chop an onion and a carrot and sauté them, put them to a bubbling broth. Cut the potatoes into dice and add to the pot, stew 10-15 minutes. Wash the glague or other grass, cut it, add to the soup and stew 5 minutes. Stop, cover with a lid and let it infuse during 5-10 minutes. Put a half of a boiled egg in every plate, put the soup and one tablespoon of sour cream. You can change the sour cream to yoghurt. For original taste eat with rye bread.

 

The story behind this recipe
My grandma taught me to cook the glague soup. It was one of the brightest impressions in my childhood. The glague is a usual grass, it grows almost everywhere in Russia, it has a pretty nice taste and smell. Every spring my grandparents came to visit us. My grandfather was a professor of biology and he took part in the Second World War. My grandmother was an artist and she came through the blockade of Leningrad. They were 18, when the war started. They met each other when they were 15 and they brought their love through the war and all their life. There is a film about their story which is called “in the name of life and love”. During the 2th World War in the blockaded Leningrad people were starving. The most terrible period was winter. The glague was one of the first grasses in the spring. Those who manage to survive after the winter picked it and cooked the soup. My grandma liked to look after children, she had her own pedagogical system. She taught us to find the glague in the yard and around the house. We brought the glague leaves and she cooked her special soup. All family gathered at the table for dinner. The grandparents were telling us stories about the war or something interesting about the nature. Then we the children make home newspaper about their visiting, the glague soup and the spring. There are a lot of sweet traditions and interesting plays in our family, and all members took part in them including the youngest ones. The grandparents taught me to rate highly tasty food, the nature, books, love and family, and I am grateful to them for it. While they were alive they supported my interest in reading the books and my wish to be a writer. She wrote verses and one of them she devoted to me. Her faith in me, her stories and her love helped me to become who I am now, to develop my taste, my talent, my feeling of a beauty of a written word.