Cream of Beets Soup--a Different Type of Borshch

As Christmas approaches I think more and more about beets and borshch, the traditional Polish beet soup. I will make the clear broth version again just before Christmas and, as always, I will serve it with small short crust pastries stuffed with mushrooms or mushed beans. But, since I already shared the recipe for the clear beet soup, today, I want to talk about the cream of beets soup, which, although made of beets, is not from the Polish menu.

Cream soup can be made almost out of anything, also beets, one of the vegetables that I enjoy a lot, especially during winter months, and that I am very familiar with. I made this cream of beets recently and I liked it very much. This soup is richer and easier to make than any other beets soup I know, but still has this familiar beet taste and the wonderful purple color. The spices that we use to season beet dishes, such as caraway, dill, and allspice, together with the sour cream enhance this soup make it taste similar to a traditional Polish borshch.

Cream of Beets
(Serves 4-6)

Ingredients:
4 medium beets, peeled,
2 shallots,
4-6 cups vegetable or beef broth,
1/2 apple (could be McIntosh, or any juicy and sour apple),
1/2 tsp allspice,
1/2 tsp ground caraway seeds,
1-2 tbsp balsamic vinegar,
1/2 cup sour cream,
2 tbsp olive oil,
2 tbsp chopped dill,
1 garlic clove, minced,
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

Preparation:
1. Heat the oil in a large heavy duty pot. Add chopped shallots and fry until soft.
2. Add beets cut into small cubes. Mix and let it all cook together on a small heat for about 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add the peeled and cut into cubes apple and cook for another 3 minutes.
3. Add the stock to the pot with beets, bring it to the boil. Season with salt and pepper. Turn down the heat and cook for about 20-30 minutes, until the beets become soft.
4. Using a blender purée the soup. Add minced garlic. Season it with vinegar, allspice, and caraway. If at that point the soup seems too thick add extra broth and bring the soup to boil again. Divide the soup among bowls, top with a dollop of sour cream and chopped dill.

Beet Salad with Walnuts--This Time from Georgia

Most of the beet dishes are about beets only. Their delicate taste can be enhanced by spices but cannot be overshadowed by them. So whenever I post a beet recipe I usually place a picture of beets at the top of the post. But I already shared so many beet recipes that I am running out of ideas how to show them in the most appealing way. After all, they are just regular beets, nothing more.

At my home we eat a lot of beets and we eat them often. We love them so much that sometimes I just roast them and add to green salads, drizzled with pomegranate vinegar and oil. Recently I have been making a beet salad which I discovered not so long ago. I make it for lunch and serve just with bread sandwiches with ham or the Italian mortadela.

I think it comes from Georgia and it is a bit different than we serve it in Poland, because of the added walnuts. It also has mayonnaise, which I hardly eat these days, but it is really a tiny amount just so the beets get kind of slightly smothered in it but it does not make the whole salad too heavy or too greasy. Finely chopped walnuts are almost undetectable and just give a bit of crunchy texture to the smooth beets. Because in Poland we eat a lot of beet salad for Easter and we add beet-horseradish preserve to meats and sausages, I thought about sharing this recipe today.

Beet Salad with Walnuts

Ingredients:
4 medium beets roasted or cooked, peeled off,
2 tbsp walnuts, finely chopped,
1 garlic clove, minced,
2 tbsp mayonnaise,
salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation:
1. Grate the beets on a grater, preferably the julienne style.
2. In a medium bowl make the sauce: mix mayonnaise, garlic, salt, and pepper. Add beets and mix with the sauce. Add finely chopped walnuts and mix again.

Serve with cold cuts, roasted meats, or just good, rye bread.

Clear Beet Soup--Polish Christmas Eve Borshch

I should not need any particular reason to post another beet recipe; there is always at least one among my top-ten posts. But for me as Polish, Christmas is a wonderful opportunity to share a recipe for this clear vegetarian borshch, possibly, the most famous Polish soup.

Until today I have never cooked this Christmas borshch myself. My mother has always been cooking it for us, either in Poland or here when she was visiting us. The Christmas Eve savory dishes (all of them vegetarian) were her specialty and I made the sweets. Unfortunately, this year she decided that this long trip overseas was too tiring for her, so the burden of keeping up with the tradition fell entirely on me.

But, on the positive side, it also became an opportunity for me finally to learn how to make borshch, especially that this is the most liked soup at me home. After a couple of phone calls, and making sure that I got all the ingredients and steps right, I got it done. And it turned out that it could not be easier.

There are many ways to prepare borshch and many families have different traditions of doing it. In our home, for example, we did not add dried porcini to it, like some other families do. During Christmas we eat cabbage with porcini or serve borshch with pastry stuffed with mushrooms, so it always seemed too much to put mushrooms also in the borshch. The other reason is that my son, who loves borshch, also hates mushrooms, so naturally I need to avoid putting them in the dishes he eats.

The most characteristic thing about this soup is that beets are not cooked, so all their nutritional values are preserved and the soup has the most beautiful and intensive purple color.
Also some of the spices used make it taste unique. Borshch is usually served in special bowls with pierogi, or accompanied by small, stuffed pastry. On occasions other than Christmas Eve it can also be made in a non-vegetarian version, for instance as a beef-beet broth and served with beef-stuffed pierogi. But my most favorite version is this Christmas Eve vegetarian borshch.

Polish Christmas Eve Borshch

Ingredients:
3-4 medium carrots, peeled,
1/4 medium celery root, peeled,
1/2 parsley root, if available, peeled
1/2 medium leek, washed thoroughly in between leaves,
6 medium beets,
vegetable bullion (optional, only if your vegetables do not release enough taste on their own),
2 garlic cloves, minced
3-4 tbsp vinegar,
2 tbsp sugar,
1/2 tsp ground caraway,
2 bay leaves,
4 all spice,
4 black peppercorns,
5 whole cloves,
4 prunes (optional),
1 tbsp salt and black pepper to taste,
1 tbsp fresh chopped dill (optional).

Preparation:
1. In a large pot bring to boil 8 cups of water with salt, bay leaves, peppercorns, and allspice.
Add carrot, celery root, parsley root, and leek, and cook for about 40 minutes, until vegetables are soft. Try the stock and if it does not have much taste you may add bullion or extra vegetable stock.
2. Peel off the beets and cut into 1/4 inch-thick slices. Add them to the pot with vegetable stock. Bring to boil but let it boil only for about a minute or two. Turn off the heat. Add caraway, ground black pepper, cloves, garlic, prunes, sugar, and balsamic vinegar.

3. Taste the soup--it should be sweet and sour, but also spicy from pepper and garlic. You may add an extra tablespoon of vinegar or sugar depending on the sweetness of the beets and carrots.
4. Cover the pot and let it stand over night to infuse all the aromas.

Reheat borshch before serving it, again without boiling it for too long. Add dill, and serve it with pierogi or small pastry.

Ukrainian Borshch--and the Bean Factor

This is probably the most popular soup in my home. And it is also one of the dishes that all the foreigners who traveled to Poland tried and keep asking for. Simply because it is unique.

Although the name suggests that it comes from Ukraine, since there was a time in our history, when borders were moving back and forth and Ukraine and Poland were parts of one kingdom, we consider this borshch Polish and it has been in our national menu for ages.

Yesterday, I was invited by an Ukrainian friend to cook an Ukrainian borshch together. I could not be more excited. I was anxious to find out what Polish and Ukrainians make under the same name.

We cooked two versions of the same borshch. One was based on a beef stock, the other was vegetarian. My grandmother used to cook a meat (pork) version of it, while my mother did mostly a vegetarian borshch. These days, I also make a vegetarian borshch, as it is always safe to serve it to friends in such diverse environment where some don't eat beef, others don't eat pork, and some don't eat meat at all. Luckily, this soup is rich enough to be very satisfying just in its purely vegetarian version and often it was served as an Eintopf; however, especially when it was made with meat. Ukrainians serve it with a special bread which is topped with garlic and oil. In Poland we add garlic directly to the soup.

As we peeled, cut, and cooked all the ingredients there was almost no difference in preparation. Svitlana made the most traditional version of the soup based on beets, carrots ,onion, potatoes, cabbage, and tomato paste. However there was one difference in how she made it and how we make it. In Poland we always add beans to the soup. During summer months it is usually green or yellow string beans, or even better a wax bean. It does not take long to cook such soup made with very fresh vegetables and can be served when the vegetables are still on the crispy side, and especially when beans and cabbage are still al dente. In winter we use white cannellini beans, and cook the borshch longer, until all the ingredients are soft. Since beans make this soup very fulfilling, we usually do not serve it with bread.

Ukrainian Borshch (Polish Version)
(Serves six)

Ingredients:
2 medium beets,
4 medium carrots,
a small piece (about 1/8) of a celery root or two celery stalks,
3 medium white potatoes,
1 medium onion,
3 garlic cloves,
about 1/4 of a small white cabbage,
1/2 lb of preferably wax beans or yellow or green string beans, or one 14 oz can of white cannellini beans,
1/2 cup of tomato paste or 2 tbsp tomato concentrate,
1/2 cup of crème fraiche, sour cream, or Greek yogurt,
fresh chopped dill or parsley,
1 bay leaf,
3 grains all spice,
salt and pepper.

Preparation:
1. In a large pot put about a gallon of water, add bay leaf and all spice and bring to boil.
2. Peel the onion, chop it, and add to the boiling water. Let it boil for about 5 minutes.
3. Peel the carrots, potatoes, and beets. Cut carrot into thin slices, potatoes into small cubes, and beets into small sticks.

You can also grate carrots and beets (but not the potatoes) on a large hole grater or use a food processor with grater blade.

4. Add beets, carrots, and celery to the pot and cook for about 20 minutes, until almost soft. If you grated the vegetables they will cook faster.
5. Add potatoes and cook for about 10 minutes.
6. Shred cabbage and add to the boiling soup together with fresh beans if you use them. Let it cook for about 10-15 minutes.
7. The last step is to season the soup with salt and freshly grated pepper and add tomato paste or concentrate. If you make this soup with white beans, rinse them under the running water, and add just before the tomato concentrate. Toss in chopped garlic and let it boil for about 3 minutes to infuse all the flavors together.

Serve warm with a dollop of crème fraiche on top, and sprinkle with dill or parsley.

Easy Beet Salad--with an Oriental Twist

I consider cabbage and beets the pillars of Polish cuisine. No wonder then that whenever I hear about them being used in different cuisines or served differently than we do in Poland, I get territorial. I am extremely open to try new dishes and particularly vegetables, and I always look forward to trying and assimilating new recipes. But, whenever I read a recipe calling for beets or cabbage, my undeniably Polish nature comes out and I approach these recipes with a great dose of scepticism. What new could possibly anyone say about these vegetable to people who have been eating them for ages in any possible incarnation, often several times a week, and which are fundamental ingredients of all our holidays?

A new color--there are yellow beets available in many food stores, new shape--even in Poland we sell new beets that are long like cucumbers, or an old style salad recipe just refreshed by adding beets? But this recipe, one of those that I found in Met Home, appealed to me from the first moment I saw it. I believe that whoever created it, really understood what beets need to taste good. Beets are rather mild by nature and usually need a lot of sourness and some other spices to bring out their delicate taste. This recipe used some Middle eastern ingredients and, believe me, this beet salad with an Oriental twist tasted extremely good and interesting.

Oriental Beet Salad

Ingredients:
3 medium beets cooked or roasted and peeled off (if you cannot buy them like that, cook whole raw beets in water for about one hour, or bake in an oven wrapped in aluminium foil for 45-60 minutes, then let them cool down and peel them),
2 small shallots sliced into very thin half rings,
2 tbsp sherry vinegar,
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses (available in most Middle Eastern grocery stores),
2 tbsp rose water (also available in oriental food stores),
3 tbsp extra-virgin oil.

Preparation:
1. Cut beets into smaller pieces. Add cut shallots.
2. Mix vinegar,molasses,rose water and oil to make a smooth dressing.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

3. Pour the dressing over the beets, cover and let them marinate for minimum 2 hours, or overnight.

Serve alone as salad itself, as accompaniment to meats, or add to other, for example green salads.

Beet and Cheese Elegant Duo--Betteraves à la Française

There was one thing that as a Polish national I could not not notice in Paris during my recent visit. It was not present there when years ago I lived in Geneva and did my weekly food shopping just a few miles on the other side of the border in the neighboring France. I mean the popularity of beets in the French cuisine.

I was able to buy beets in Geneva or France but now you could buy them in every vegetable market in Paris and even such snobbish food stores as la Grande Epicerie de Paris, and I was shocked to see the beets having such a prominent place at the shelves among salads, asparagus, and the so-popular-in-France zucchini. Moreover, in the fresh food sections of any market a beet salad was one of the three typical ready made salads next to the traditional celery root and carrot remoulade.

I guess although beets are not very characteristic for the French cuisine, French consumers, being sensitive to a tasty and healthy food, recognized the value of the beets. That makes me very proud, as I consider them Polish speciality.

Not only did I see people eating beets in salads for lunch, but one of the best restaurants in a five star Champs Elysées Plaza hotel, its chef Vincent Boucher serves a sophisticated starter made from beets, blackberries, and fresh white cheese (fromage frais aka as fromage blanc) and ricotta. I was so impressed with this combination that I decided to reproduce this dish. Unfortunately, the original "fromage blanc" is not available in the US. You can achieve something similar by straining plain yogurt over night on a cheese cloth. I made it using Greek yogurt (without straining it), because it has similar sourness and consistency as "fromage blanc". I also added lemon juice and made some changes, as a beet specialist by birth.

Here is my version of this old Polish vegetable prepared the French way.

Beet and Cheese Duo
(Serves six)

Ingredients:
12 blackberries,
6 medium beets, plus extra one small for decoration,
4 tbsp cream cheese, preferably fresh, or whipped,
2 garlic cloves, minced,
6 tbsp fromage blanc or Greek yogurt,
half a box of chopped chives,
1 tbsp lemon juice,
1/2 tsp.cumin,
salt and pepper,

Preparation:
1. Peel beets, cut into small cubes and cook in salted water for 6-8 minutes. Drain and cool completely.
2. Place beets in a food processor and puree them coarsely, but stop before they turn completely mushy.
3. Transfer the beets to a medium bowl, add salt and pepper, season with cumin and lemon. Add two tbsp of fromage blanc or Greek yogurt and mix well.
4. Chop blueberries and fold into the beets.
5. Prepare 6 small glass dishes. Divide equally the beet mixture among glasses and chill them in a fridge for 1/2 hour.
6. In small bowl combine cream cheese, fromage blanc (or Greek yogurt), garlic, salt, pepper, and chives.
7. Take out the containers with beets and top each portion with a layer of the cheese mixture. Chill again for a minimum of 2 hours.
8. Cut the remaining small beet julienne and put on top of each glass.
9. Serve beet duos with fresh baguette.

Beet Salad Again--And Why Not?

Especially that it is such a winter vegetable. Beets have been very "in" in the culinary world for quite a few years now. But in Polish cuisine they have been in for centuries. So when I see the best chefs in the world proudly throwing them over the green salads, I smile. I smile even more when I look at the price of such dishes on the menu of the most renowned restaurants.

In Poland, beet has always been a vegetable of the poor, a country food. They still are just one of the most basic, cheap, and popular ingredients of our cuisine. And one of the most beloved. No wonder that I can post several recipes featuring beets in a main role to popularize this wonderful and healthy vegetable.

Besides being used for soups (barszcz) and as a warm meat accompaniment, beets are most popular in salads. Although I love Belgian endive with beets, or green salads served with them, I prefer traditional salads that truly capture their taste and the intensive color. They can be eaten on their own or served with cold cuts or grilled meats.

This is a second from probably about ten salads that I have been serving at my house, always with a great success, and not only to my Polish friends. I make it from roasted beets rather than cooked beets. They are more healthy and tasty that way, but cooked or even marinated beets can be used as well, although in the latter case I would cut out lemon and vinegar, which are used in this recipe.

Beet Salad
(Serves 4-6)

Ingredients:
4 medium roasted beets, cut first into slices and then into sticks,
2 tsp lemon juice,
2 tsp white wine vinegar,
1 garlic clove, minced,
2 tsp olive oil,
2 tsp sour cream or yogurt, preferably Greek,
2 tsp mustard,
2 tbsp mayonnaise,
freshly ground pepper,
1 tbsp freshly chopped dill (optional),
1/2 tsp salt.

Preparation:
1. Put the beet sticks in a large bowl and season with salt, lemon juice, vinegar, and sugar. Mix well gently and let them marinate for at least two hours or even overnight.

2. Make the sauce: in a small bowl mix mayonnaise, mustard, olive oil, cream or yogurt, garlic, and pepper.

3. Pour the sauce over the beets and mix gently. Let it stand aside for 30 minutes.
4. Season with dill and serve.

Jicama and Cabbage Salad--the Best of Two Worlds

In the first week of October, my sister came to visit us for three days. Of course, I wanted to be a good host and cook something that she would enjoy. The problem is that, although we grew in the same home, we are very different, especially when it comes to the culinary taste. As a child, she was the biggest picky eater any mother could imagine and, unfortunately, she has stayed that way. If you can imagine a person cutting the fat out of a perfectly lean prosciutto, that would be her. Almost in every dish there would be something that she finds "suspicious".

After going through hundreds of dinner ideas, I got discouraged and decided to go with the flow. My refrigerator is always full, especially now when I write a food blog, and any accidental guest can find something attractive there. When on a sunny day I was shooting my herring salad on the deck she did not even look in that direction; she has never had a piece of fish or any sea food in her mouth. Later that day I made a salad, also to take pictures of it. Surprisingly, it instantly became a culinary highlight of her visit. It would not be an exaggeration to say that she ate almost the whole huge bowl by herself over these three days. This salad blends perfectly the familiar with the exotic: our old good cabbage and beets with jicama and avocado that come from a completely different world. Jicama is the least known ingredient, which tastes like a mix of a pear and a radish, but more subtle than any of the two.

I was intrigued by this recipe from the moment I saw it probably already ten years ago. Since my cabbage recipe has been on of my biggest hits so far, from Mauritius to Copenhagen, I think it is a good moment to share this salad with those who check this blog.

At first, it seems that this salad won't be easy to make because it includes too many ingredients, not to mention two dressings, but most of them are either in our kitchens already or can be easily found in every supermarket. I modified slightly the original recipe by making the avocado dressing more thick and spicy, which turns this salad into a wonderful lunch meal in itself.

Jicama Purple Salad
(Serves 4-6; adapted from "Mexico: The Beautiful Cookbook")

Ingredients:
1/2 jicama cut into thin sticks (about 1 cup),
1 lb red cabbage (about half of the medium-sized head) thinly sliced,
1 medium raw beet thinly sliced (if you have a julienne slicer it would work best)
1/2 medium onion tiny sliced,
1 bag (6-8 oz) baby spinach,
1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds.

Oil dressing:
2 tsp soy sauce,
1/2 cup corn oil,
2 tbsp cider vinegar,
1 tsp dried vegetable bouillon,
1 tsp dried oregano,
1 tsp dried tarragon.

Avocado dressing:
2 avocados flesh,
2 garlic cloves minced,
2 tbsp lime juice,
1 cup sour cream,
1 tbsp chopped chives,
salt and pepper.

Preparation:
1. In a large bowl mix cabbage, beet, spinach, onion, and jicama.
2. Prepare the oil dressing by mixing all the ingredients in a a small bowl.
3. To make the avocado dressing, puree avocado,lemon, and cream in a blender. Transfer to another bowl. Add chives and season with salt and pepper.
4. Pour the oil dressing over the vegetables and mix until all are covered with it. Add sesame seeds and mix again.
5. Serve on individual plates with a couple of spoons of the avocado dressing on top.

This salad can be eaten just with bread or to accompany roasted or grilled meats.

Simplest Polish Beet Salad--Back to the Roots

I would not be Polish, if I did not talk about beetroots again. And I admit that they are one of my favorite Polish vegetables. Luckily, I have found them without any problems everywhere I lived. In Switzerland, where they also make beetroot salads, I could buy them already cooked, and here in America, I can buy them in more colors than red.

Going through food magazines I realized that beetroots are becoming increasingly popular. Many famous chefs and top restaurants include them into salads, while farmers clone them into unusual colors. But only in Polish and Russian cuisines beets have a truly prominent and well established position.

We prepare many national dishes with beetroots--the famous beetroot soup (barszcz aka borscht) and cold beet soup (chlodnik), and many varieties of salads. I love to eat them in the simplest way as accompaniment to meats and a dinner salad, but I also keep trying new recipes and look for new inspirations. The other day I have found a South American salad with beets that I will incorporate into my menu. It looked very original and I am sure the taste will not be disappointing. I was wondering today, if I should make something fancy and elegant to make you crave for beets, like the not-so-Polish beet salad that I make often, or rather make something really simple and familiar to show beets the way we eat them most often in Poland.

I think that if you are not afraid, or rather curious of beets, you should try them the way that we prepare them in their Polish kingdom. I would probably not post this easy recipe on any Polish blog, but since my native readers are a minority on my blog, I feel excused to do that. I hope to encourage some others to try beets, perhaps for the first time ever.

A good news is that beets (and especially their juice) are not only fashionable but also very healthy, as they are known to help fight cancer.

Since beet juice is so healthy I made just one modification in this traditional recipe and do not cook beets in water, as we do it in Poland for any kind of salads, but bake them in an oven. This way I preserve not only their beautiful color, but also some of the nutrients that would be otherwise thrown away with the water. I usually plan, and bake them when I use the oven to bake some other dish. Baked and peeled they preserve well in a refrigerator for up to 5 days.

I also add caraway seeds to that salad, as it has been done in my home, but if you do not like that specific taste you can easily skip that, without diminishing taste of the salad.

Beet Salad

4 medium beets,
1/2 sweet onion,
3 tbsp red balsamic vinegar,
1 tbsp sugar,
2 tbsp olive oil,
1 tsp caraway seeds,
salt and pepper.

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 375-400F.
2. Wash beets and wrap each of them separately in the aluminum foil.
3. Place them in the oven and bake for around one hour, or a little bit more or less, depending on their size.
4. Peel off the foil, remove the skin (the best is to do that in gloves, as beets will color hands), and grate the beets on a grater with very large holes.
5. Peel off the onion and cut into very small cubes.
6. Mix beets with onion, add vinegar, sugar, oil, salt, and pepper. Taste if you need more vinegar or salt, depending on taste.
7. At the end, add caraway seeds if used.
8. Let them marinate for a couple of hours and serve cold, as salad.

This salad can be stored in a refrigerator up to 4 days. It tastes best with red meats or cold cuts.

Red Cabbage Salad--Coleslaw's Polish Cousin

Poland can certainly be called a land of cabbage and potatoes. These two ingredients, together with beets, practically define Polish cuisine. If you visit Polish farmers markets you will be astounded by the mountains of cabbage heads and the great variety and quantity of potatoes being sold. Therefore, while spending the whole month in Poland, I cannot resist introducing my international readers to cabbage.

Whenever any foreigner asks about Polish cuisine or wants to show any knowledge of it, cabbage-based dishes inevitably come up. The most famous is bigos--a long cooked dish (it can take days to cook bigos properly), which is made from sour and fresh cabbage with a generous amount of different meats and sausages, and it is spiced up with dried porcini or prunes. It is very heavy but very tasty and everyone who has been raised in its flavor is nostalgic about it. Foreigners who tried it either fell in love with bigos, or hate forever even the very smell of it.

For those who are even scared to try bigos, we also have much lighter and less odoriferous dishes that are made of cabbage. They are also much easier to prepare. We have many variations of them in our national cuisine and anyone who is willing to try them, will find for sure a dish made of cabbage that is very tasty but also very light.

Unfortunately, as foreign cuisines have become widespread in Poland in recent years and even all the "holes in the walls" now serve exotic food like sushi or Turkish kebab, it is now much harder to find a good traditional dish like a cabbage salad, which used to be so prominent on the Polish daily menu.

Red cabbage was always one of my favorites. It is very healthy as it is particularly rich in vitamins K and C. It can be served in a cooked version, as a side dish to heavier meats like duck or venison, but the one I make at home is a simple salad made of raw red cabbage to preserve all its nutritional values. It can be served to accompany any meat, especially grilled.

Red Cabbage Salad

Ingredients:
1/2 head red cabbage,
1/2 medium sweet onion,
2 tbsp roasted, slivered almonds,
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar,
1 tsp of sugar,
1/4 cup olive oil,
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese (optional),
salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation:
1. Shred cabbage thinly, salt generously, and set aside for about half an hour.
2. Using hands squeeze cabbage to help soften and macerate in its own juice.
3. Season with sugar, vinegar, and pepper.
4. Add onion and oil and mix well.
5. Sprinkle with almonds and serve.

Useful tips:
This salad can also be served at lunch with bread and cold meat cuts. If you sprinkle it with feta cheese, it would become a rich meal in itself.

Cold Beet Soup--Nothing Cooler than That!

It has been unbelievably hot since May. Temperatures often exceed 100F. On such days there is nothing more desirable than a cold soup.

Almost each hot climate cuisine has its own cold soup for hot days. The most famous come from the countries where summer dominates any other season. We all know Spanish Gazpacho, Greek lemon chicken soup, French Vichyssoise. But not everyone would believe that there are also cold soups in a traditional Polish cookbook, although summers in Poland can often be rainy and cold.

We have our own list of cold sweet soups made from our summer fruits starting with strawberries and cherries to apples. But my favorite has always been the cold beet soup although it is more labor intensive and not sweet at all. In Polish it is called "Chlodnik" which could be translated as something like a chiller or a cooler, and it is based on beetroots, but should not be confused with another famous soup called Barszcz, which is served hot and mainly during during winter months.

Everything in this soup is about summer. All the ingredients are fresh, crispy and aromatic.

During my deck dinner parties I have served cautiously this soup to the most culinary cosmopolitan guests about three times already and, to my happy surprise, whenever the summer heat comes back to DC, my friends ask for my Chlodnik again.

The recipe is simple, but it involves a lot of chopping and two special ingredients--young beets and cucumbers is brine. Exactly for that reason I wrote about cucumbers in brine in one of my previous posts.

Beets have become very popular and many cooks experiment with them, so now they are also widely available. You just need to cut them-from roots up to leaves, into small pieces and cook. This can be messy, but some shortcuts can be made to skip these steps, which I admit I did sometimes myself.

Instead of making your own cucumbers in brine you can use Kosher Dill Pickles, which you can buy at most food stores. You can also replace the fresh beets with the canned ones.



Cold Beet Soup
Ingredients:
1 bunch fresh beets,or 2 cans,
1 English cucumber,
4-6 small kirby cucumbers in brine,
1 bunch of radish,
1 bunch of dill,
1 bunch of spring onion,
32 oz European, or Greek yogurt,
salt, pepper.



Preparation:
1. If using raw beets wash them and cut off above the roots.
2. Cut the stalks up to the leaves in small pieces,about 1/4 of inch.
3. Cut beet roots in slices, then in pillars and finally into small cubes.
4. Cook all chopped parts in 4 cups of salted water. If you use canned sliced beets just cut them into small cubes (please see the photos), saving all the juice.
5. Similarly, cut radish, salted cucumbers, and fresh ones in small cubes.
6. Chop dill and spring onion.
7. In a large pot combine all the vegetables and cooked or canned beets and mix gently.
8. Add yogurt and mix again, seasoning with salt and pepper as needed.
9. Chill the soup for minimum 2 hours, but leave preferably over night in the refrigerator.
10. Serve cold with a dollop of fresh or sour cream.



Useful tip:
We serve this soup with cooked young potatoes garnished with fried onion and bacon, or simply alone. Some people also put a hard-boild egg in Chlodnik.