Did you know that I spent a month in the USSR when I was 12 years old? I went there with my parents on some sort of academic exchange of my dad's. For most of our time there we stayed in a dorm room at Moscow State University (MGU), which was available because it was summertime and the regular school year had ended. The university had turned off the hot water for some reason, so I got used to taking freezing cold showers. We also went to then-Leningrad and stayed in one of the most sumptuous hotel suites I've ever seen, but that's another story.
Before our trip, my father taught me how to read Cyrillic, and this came in handy for things like reading menus, identifying which subway station we were in, and transliterating large Soviet signs (such as "Slava Trudu" which means "Hooray for Work"). I remember pyramid shaped paper containers of whole milk--you tore off a corner to pour or sip, and the inside of the paper was coated with yellow cream. I remember having the best ice cream I've ever tasted: it was always vanilla, and wrapped in a crumbly chocolate coating. We saw opera and ballet performances, ate caviar on toast at the top of the Kremlin, attended a real Soviet circus, walked around the pastel colored Gum department store, drank sugary hot tea from glasses with metal handles, and went to the VDNK exhibition (similar to a state fair). The main thing I remember about the VDNK was the water vending machines that were standing out in the hot sun, where thirsty people could drink from a shared glass that was chained to the machine. It was June, and all of Moscow seemed buried in drifts of cottonwood fluff.
This is a long way of saying that I can remember a little Cyrillic, and when I see a word like "Shchavel" I know that the first 4 letters of that word are one character in Cyrillic: щ. Shchavel is the Russian word for "Sorrel," which I was looking up because somebody had given me a sorrel plant last year and it was looking rather ripe for the picking in the corner of my garden.
At first I thought I'd make a French sorrel soup from my plant. But when I found this Valentina's Corner recipe for Shchavel Borscht, I knew I had to make that instead. Admittedly while saying SHCHAVEL BORSCHT as many times as possible in what I imagined to be a deeply authentic Russian accent. щавель Борщ!
Sorrel is the genus Rumex, which makes it a relative of docks. The sorrel leaves are somewhat fleshy. They have a slightly piquant taste when raw, surprisingly similar to wood sorrel (which is a different genus and looks like a spindly-stemmed shamrock with 3 heart-shaped leaves).
I washed and chopped my Shchavel leaves. According to Valentina's Corner, this is really a Ukrainian soup. I don't know a lot about Ukrainian cuisine but I have noticed this country knows how to find nutrition and healing from the plant kingdom. (For instance did you know that "Chernobyl" is the Ukrainian word for Artemisia vulgaris, aka mugwort or wormwood?)
Essentially the Borscht is a chicken and potato soup that has been lightly flavored with sour cream and ketchup.
The lightly lemony sorrel gives it a bit more tartness, but it is not super sour or at all bitter.
Add a dollop of smetana (sour cream) to each bowl of Shchavel Borscht. Ready!!
Are you a Borscht person? Until I found this recipe I thought that Borscht had to have beets in it, but not so. It just needs to be sour. Na zdorovie!
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