My Long Shot Recipe Adventure

When I was seventeen, like many girls that age, I craved adventure and acceptance, sometimes simultaneously. In search of either or both, I made choices then, which seem foolhardy now, such as taking a day trip to New York City with $5 in my pocketbook.

My mother bit her lip, handing me one five-dollar bill. “It’s all I can afford,” she said, having already shelled out $15 for a Broadway show and $7 for a bus ticket so I could tag along with a local theatre troupe to see the season's hot ticket Chorus Line.

“I can get dinner for five bucks,” I assured her. "No sweat."

Hard to believe $5 dollars was a decent amount of money in 1976, at least in my sleepy Southeastern Pennsylvania hometown. Sadly, but also predictably, I was oblivious to what things cost in the Big Apple.

Following the rousing matinee, the older members of our group insisted we dine at the Russian Tea Room or the “RTR,” as regulars called it.

"We must go there. It's faaaabulous," the most fashionable among us counseled. You knew he meant bordering on legendary when the first syllable took one entire second to pronounce.

Heads filled with catchy showtunes and feet barely touching the sidewalk, our little band sashayed 13 blocks north on 7th Avenue from 44th Street to 57th Street to dine at the reputed restaurante fabuloso.

Having grown up on a 44-acre farmette, I was raised on country sausage, fried tomatoes, scrapple, plus several delicacies my suburban girlfriends were never subjected to such as chicken-fried groundhog and sunfish Italiano (made from bread crumbs flavored with Italian seasoning). My stomach was desperately hoping for the appearance of solid food on the tea room menu. I couldn't imagine what the Russians ate with their tea, but I comforted myself that no self-respecting Soviet comrade could survive Siberian winters on just crumpets.

As the host seated us, tantalizing aromas of grilled beef mingled with roasting chicken made my empty stomach do a somersault. As I opened the oversized menu, I spotted Chicken Kiev, the entrée everyone was buzzing about, on the left-hand side of the page. Once my eyes caught up with the right-hand side of the page, I realized I couldn't afford their signature dish. That’s when I began reading the menu from right to left.

After a long minute, I finally found one dish I could afford. Only one. A bowl of borscht. Beet soup.

Blender borscht was a pet diet food of my mother's, which she always enjoyed by herself. No one else in my family would eat cold soup made from red beets even if she did throw in a beef bouillon cube for extra flavor, not even if you paid us.

The waiter turned to me. I was nigh on starving. With all the aplomb I could muster, I told him, "I'll have the borscht." Surely I impressed my sophisticated companions as I breezed through borscht’s final five-consonant blend without a stutter.

“To start?” he asked.

Why did he have to ask that? Because it was the 70s. Because no one ate soup as a main meal back then when dining out. Sure, cheese fondue was all the rage. But not a simple bowl of soup tagged as an appetizer. “No, that’s all,” I assured him, painting on a satisfied smile.

I immediately regretted ordering cold beet soup. My stomach started growling and churning midway through the paper-thin second act. In the company of these discerning thespians, however, I knew I could appear to enjoy almost anything and pretend to be intentional about nearly everything.

I was taking in the tinsel-trimmed chandelier above my head, quite the novelty in decorating for April (when was Russian Christmas?) when the borscht arrived. It wasn't cold. It wasn't pureed in a blender. Here, I had ordered a mouth-watering golden-brown consommé, brimming with savory meat and vegetables.

That brown borscht satisfied me like no soup I'd ever had before or since, and my mom made scrumptious beef vegetable soup as a rule. I downed it, enjoying the afterglow from a perfect food—flushed cheeks, full belly, warm feet.

For the next several years, as if searching for Jimmy Hoffa, I scoured cookbooks for a hot brown borscht recipe. At the same time, I was reaching that stage in life when recreating childhood foods no longer contented me. I sought out new dishes. Like the Sirens beckoning Odysseus, the promise of an untried savory bite cried out from the pages of some very elevated cookbooks: "Spend a little time with me."

Farm Journal Cookbook, be dashed.

My palate was under siege. Visions of beef braciole and spinach frittatas consumed me. Gradually and with no fanfare, because there was no internet (this was at least two decades before searching for recipes on Google would become routine), and because I was now married and expecting, I abandoned my quest to find a beef borscht recipe.

Fast forward to Christmas in 1991. I was on a healthy-eating kick, so my husband gave me the newest cookbook by Jane Brody. I took it to bed for some late-night reading, which is what people did before Kindles. And there it was—Russian Beef Borscht. Page 214 in the Main-Dish Soup section. Imagine. Sometime over the past twenty years, soup had become a main dish. (Or perhaps it had always been one, and I missed that development, like so many other things self-possessed young people gloss over.) That night, I slept fitfully knowing that in only a matter of hours, a fifteen-year mission to find and recreate the world’s most perfect soup would be complete.

"Great soup, hon," said my husband. My then two-year-old daughter asked for some without any coaxing, promptly picking out the carrots. The soup was delicious. And the flavor and sumptuousness nearly matched one impressionable country girl's enduring recollection of a perfect food.

Today, many iterations of classic Russian Beef Borscht are now accessed using any internet search engine, even the Russian Tea Room’s very own one-time recipe, which is quite complex, using three different kinds of meat—beef, pork, and duck—to make the savory stock. According to their online menu, one bowl of Red Borscht today costs $28. At first I gasped from the sticker shock. Then I used one of those online conversion tools and learned $5 in 1976 would be worth $27.05 today.

The precise soup they served me isn’t on the menu presently but can be imitated by ladling the beef broth into the bowl first, followed by the beet mixture, just before serving.

While the ladling trick is simple enough, buying three different meats to make one dish, let alone a lowly soup, screamed holiday extravagance and not lazy-weekend-family-dinner budget, so I won’t be sharing the RTR recipe, which also uses juniper berries. Where exactly does a small-town cook find juniper berries? Pull them right off the shrub? Also, there are some wonderfully complex beef bouillon bases available to every cook these days to enhance a dish’s depth of flavor. So, to encourage more cooks to try making this soup, I am offering a simplified version of Beef Borscht to try.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (divided) or bacon fat
• 1 pound lean beef, such as sirloin, cut into cubes
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 bay leaf (2 if small-sized)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon pepper
• 4 cups beef or vegetable broth plus four cups water
• 4 medium-sized beets, peeled and grated*
• 2 carrots, peeled and grated
• 2 tablespoons vinegar
• 2 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 cup shredded cabbage
• 1 14.5-ounce can tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• ½ teaspoon dill seed
• ½ teaspoon celery seed
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Beef bouillon base to taste (optional)
• 1 tablespoon fresh dill, chopped
• Sour cream, for garnish

*No need to hand grate the veggies. Just use a grating attachment and throw into your food processor.

Cooking instructions

Preparing the beef broth: Heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil or bacon fat in a large soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Brown the beef quickly. Add the chopped onion and minced garlic, sautéing until translucent. Pour in the beef broth, water, tomato paste, bay leaf, salt, and pepper, and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover the pot, and let the broth simmer until the meat is tender (roughly 1½ hours), allowing the flavors to blend.

Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables in a separate pan: In a large sauté pan (12”), heat the other tablespoon of vegetable oil. You can use bacon fat, if you prefer. Add the grated beets, grated carrots, and vinegar, and cook until tender, at least 20 minutes. Stir in the diced potatoes, shredded cabbage, diced tomatoes, sugar, dill seed, and celery seed. (You can also use pickling spices for the dill and celery seed.) Cook the vegetables for about 15 minutes, ensuring they are evenly coated with the spices.

Combining the broth and vegetables: Transfer the cooked vegetables to the pot with the beef and broth. Stir well to combine the ingredients. Cover the pot and let the borscht simmer on low heat for approximately 30 minutes or until all the vegetables are fully cooked and tender. Season with more salt and pepper to taste and a teaspoon or two of beef bouillon base, if desired. Once the borscht is cooked, remove it from the heat. Stir in some freshly chopped dill for freshness.

To serve: Ladle the borscht into serving bowls. Garnish each bowl with a dollop of sour cream and a sprig of fresh dill. The borscht can be enjoyed hot or cold, depending on your preference, but I prefer hot. For a little RTR touch, top the borscht with a bit of shredded beef.

This recipe incorporates so many nutritious veggies to nourish you and your family: potassium, folate, complex carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins A, B, and C, and manganese, to name a few. While these are vital to good health, let me assure you this tasty recipe also fortifies the soul.

So, on a crisp fall evening or frosty winter’s night, treat yourself to a centuries’ old recipe, free from angst, despite today’s geopolitical climate. Borscht is believed to be Ukrainian by origin, dating back to the 14th century, providing sustenance for generations of Eastern Europeans. As an iconic New York institution, renowned for feeding discriminating Carnegie Hall patrons for decades, the Russian Tea Room should not be associated with the present-day Russian aggression and has renounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine on its website.

Go ahead and string some Christmas tinsel through your dining room light fixture and prepare yourself to savor a dish for the ages, worth at least $28 a bowl but costing less than $2.50 a serving.

Bon appétit and dobre zdorov'ya (Ukrainian for good health).