NatalieGreenland

Passport & Plate - Borzh

Ukraine | Friday, March 14, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
* Cabbage 1/2
* Beet 1/2
* Carrot 1/2
* Potato 3 small
* Onion 1/2
* Garlic 2
* Green-stuff
* Beans 1/3 of glass
* Salo/fat
* Salt, pepper, sugar
* Peeled tomatoes in juice
* Sour cream
* Bay leaf
* Parsnip 1/2
* Pepper
* Sunflower oil

 

How to prepare this recipe
Beans should be left in water for 24 hours and kept in a refrigerator. In this case it will be ready within half an hour. We boil the beans. Roots cut into strips and boil together with beans in hot water. After we added a certain amount of salt, peal and slice potato. Meanwhile onion is preparing in a pan with sunflower oil till it becomes soft and then we add cut with small pieces tomato. We call it zazharka. Also can add some sugar to zazharka (a teaspoon). When potato in a saucepan is ready we add zazharka there. Add chopped cabbage, pepper and fat smashed in pounder with garlic, salt and black pepper. Add some green stuff. Keep it 15-20 minutes.
Salt was never sifted into borzh. In a boiled bouillon the spoon with salt was placed in order for salt to melt. And after that with a hand on a hip it was tasted with lips like tube blowing carefully. By the way, almost everyone is offering to stew roots. We don't! In this case it will be too soft. Cabbage also shouldn't be cooked just boiled in almost ready borzh. The same as italian pasta "al dente ". ?runch of cabbage will add some new unfamiliar feelings. Or you can watch a lump sugar melting. Meditate and enjoy creation and art of food. By the way, don't forget to add sour cream.
Borzh tastes even better the next day!

 

The story behind this recipe
I was born and grown up in Ukraine. Every summer I spent on the Black Sea shore with my grandmother in a place called Kuban ( Krasnodar region). Later we moved there and still live here. This place connects two nationalities: Ukraine and Russia. Kuban is like borzh. If you take away just one ingredient it will become a boring soup. In villages people don't speak Russian but kuban dialect called balachka. Half Russian and half Ukrainian. For me living in Russia and hearing almost Ukrainian language makes me happy by reminding my motherland and native language. I read in one article that Ukrainian language is on the second place by its beauty after Italian. The most favorite dish which my grandma cooks and likes to eat is BORZH. She was adding some more borzh to my plate saying: "Keep eating love, I will add you some more!" Borzh is salty, sweet and sour at the same time. It is also first and second course in one plate.
Ukrainian salo is considered to be national "drug". There are so many jokes about Ukrainians who fight for it and find it the most precious thing in the world. My grandmother cultivated a taste to embroidery and handiwork. She taught me to love other people and help them in difficult situations. Just like any Ukrainian will do. Give the last what you have to those in need. She is the most careful and loved person. By the way, granny was never precise with measures. When I asked for a recipe it was always a handful of this and that. We call it "by eye".