Don't Boil the Beets.

Today was a long day at the University, such that when I came home at around 7:45 I was in a mood to write e-mails of complaint to all sources of my distress. But instead I made borsch. I am going to share with you this evening's thoughts on borsch.

1. This is not a thin, brothy soup with a few ruby-coloured shreds in it. You need to put in at least a carrot, an onion, a potato or two, some celery, and a couple of beets. Unless you add two gallons of stock it will be a substantial thing. With a piece of bread, a bowl of borsch should pass for lunch. With a sausage and a couple of perogies, it's a feast. Add cabbage rolls and pickles, and you have an embarrassment of riches.

2. Don't be mean to beets. In my varied attempts to draw the perfect red-magenta colour out of them, I have abused beets in all kinds of ways - roasting, sauteeing, grating, boiling, and simmering. Apparently, the meaner you are to a beet (say, by boiling it too long) the worse the colour will look, and an angry beet will eventually become a sad orangey-red puddle of its former self. Tonight, hoping to avoid beet-madness, I followed a suggestion supposedly from the Russian Tea Room to make a long-simmered beet broth to add to the soup late in the process. This worked well, however I can't imagine too many babas with separate pots of delicately simmering beets and pork/duck/juniper berry broth. There must be a better way. Someday I will learn it.

3. Organic vegetables are yummy. Yeah, the yuppie-market isn't quite the same as making borsch from whatever's ready in the garden and the root cellar, but this is Berkeley.

4. No two pots of borsch are ever the same. Tonight's is good - with cooking liquid from last week's bacon-soaked collards, lots of dill, and not overcooked. Next time I may have a ham bone. Or maybe I'll be too lazy to grate the carrots. Or maybe I'll get that perfect beet-balance. Only the borsch-gods know.

5. Making soup is a good way to be less irritated with the phone company, the library, and the university IT people.