Recipe Borscht (cold)

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I have to say that this recipe looks amazing when served. The colour is fantastic and the texture spot on. But I am a little disappointed by the lack of flavours coming through. Perhaps it was the fact that I was lacking in fresh beetroot? My weight was just under the 500g required and my beetroots were not as fresh as they could have been.

Perhaps it is also I fact that I really do not like orange peel as a flavour? Or is it just that my orange produced less than 200 mI of orange juice and may have been sweeter and less tart than I was expecting: I don't know but so far I have been a little underwhelmed by the flavour and have been trying to come up with ways of adding a little something to the soup to help to improve it.

Ingredients
500g raw beetroot
I red onion, chopped
2 tbsp decent olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
3-5 tomatoes, chopped
2 tsps veg boullin pwd
750-1000ml water
I orange, zest and juice
Salt & pepper to taste
1-2 tbsp tamari
sour cream or soya cream (optional)

Method

1. Top and tail the raw beetroot, then cut in half. Grate each half directly into a bowl. Start grating the cut side and eventually you'll get down to a thin skin that won't grate any further. Discard this thin skin.
2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan or skillet and cook the onions until translucent, now add the garlic and cook for a couple more minutes.
3. Add the grated raw beetroot, the tomatoes, vegetable bouillin powder, zest of orange and water to the onions and bring to the boil, then simmer gently for 15 minutes or until the grated beetroot is cooked.
4. Allow the soup to cool before pureeing in batches, in a liquidiser, adding the orange juice in and mixing well. Add more water, if required to achieve desired thickness. Add in the tamari (soy sauce) and stir well. Season if needed.
5. Serve chilled with a touch of soy cream for decoration.

Whilst writing this up, I realise that I have failed to add any tamari soy sauce to our soup which could be contributing to the lack of flavour. I'll add it in for tomorrow's evening meal to see if it improves the flavour.

Cold Borscht

• SatNavSaysStraightOn
• 5 Jan 2020

Cold Borscht

• SatNavSaysStraightOn
• 6 Jan 2020

Update:
Adding the tamari soy sauce to the dish did make quite a difference, as did adding in another couple of tomatoes, so I have revised the recipe a tad.

I do wonder if changing the way that the beetroot were cooked, changed their flavour? The original recipe said to cut off the greens leaving some stalk and to also remove the roots. That makes an assumption about how the raw beetroot are available to you and the organic raw beetroot available to me came ready topped and tailed. It then wanted the beetroot immersed completely in water and boiled for an hour, before being diced and further boiled for another 15 minutes. The cooking water was not utilised at all. For me, right now, due to the heat of an Australian summer and due to the added issues of a serious bushfire season causing major air quality problems, bolding something for an hour only to discard the water and then continue cooking it after dicing, seems pointless and causes the house to heat up needlessly. So I modified the cooking time, by grating the beetroot before cooking it. In all my other recipes using raw beetroot as a starting point, It has not made any noticeable difference.