Borsch with Healthy Grain bread

Borsch with Healthy Grain bread

Flushed with the success of our first soup day, we decided to go grand and different  for our second event.

Mike checked his Soup  bible and said, ”What about this one? Do you know what it is?, Borsch??”.

I thought a bit and said “I think it is a beetroot based soup but I've never had it. Let's try it.”

And so we did. The explanation in the book said it was a classic Russian soup and just the thing to try if you wanted something a little different.A little different was somewhat an understatement. It was like no soup I had ever had before.

Mike started by collecting the ingredients. Most of them are easily obtained;celery, apple, beets of course, mushrooms, red pepper, onion, thyme, cumin, lemon juice, pepper. bay leaf and for finishing sour cream and dill,

“Are you sure you are supposed to peel the beets ?”I said. “Won't they bleed ?” The only experience I had with beets was with pickled beets and I know you don't peel those until after they are cooked. But the recipe says to peel and cook the beets so that's what Mike did. He didn't realize that the soup was meant to feed 10 people so he had to constantly switch saucepans to accommodate all the soup, ending up with a huge amount of steaming red liquid , smelling quite earthy and beety.

I meanwhile was making the bread to go with it. I had chosen a hearty grain bread, very healthy with lots of tasty ingredients; wheat flour, honey ,carrots, currants, bran and wheat germ. My biggest mistake was I didn't realize it would take 3 hours to make so the borsch had to simmer and mature while we were waiting for lunch.

The final result was a plentiful soup, unusual, kind of sweetish and the bread was ultra hot and  delicious.

So with butter on the bread, (difficult to cut just being cooked) , a glass of red wine, a dollop of cream to color the borsh, we sat down to a sumptious meal, just rather a little too much!!

We rated the borsch ' Mike gave it a 9  but he said the following day when he tried it again as we did have rather a lot of soup over, it had matured nicely and he would give it a 10. I on the other hand would only give it a 6. It was just too different for my taste.

However we still have some in the fridge so now maybe as it is improved and I can give it an 8. I'll let you know.