Joan’s Cold Beet Borscht
This is the beet borscht Cooks Without Borders founder Leslie Brenner grew up with. It is her mother’s recipe, served cold or room temperature — the style enjoyed by the diaspora of Ashkenazi Jews from Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Poland, Lithuania and throughout the Baltic. Consisting of nothing more than beets (roots and greens) water, lemon juice, salt and sugar, it is vegetarian. At the table, sour cream is stirred into each bowl to taste; skip that, and it’s vegan. Hot boiled red potatoes and a bowl of diced radish, cucumber and sliced scallion are passed at the table for garnish. It may sound basic — and it is. But it happens to be extraordinarily delicious.
We like to buy bunches of beets with their greens for this recipe, which uses roots, along with a few leaves; two healthy bunches of medium-sized beets (about 3 inches diameter) is usually the right amount. If you can only find beets without greens, here’s a hack: Pick up a pack of spring salad mix that includes beet greens. Pick out the beet green leaves (they’re the ones with the red lines down their center), and throw them into the pot, then eat the rest as salad. If your market has beets with their greens and without, you can buy one bunch with and make up the rest of the weight with single roots.
For the sour cream part of the garnish, borscht-eaters should be generous as they dress their bowls: You want to stir in enough sour cream to turn the dark red soup a beautiful fuchsia color.
Makes 5 to 6 servings (about 8 1/2 cups borscht).