I hate to say it, but nothing really inspires me about the traditional American Easter dinner — ham or lamb, maybe some asparagus or green bean casserole. Yawn. But when I started dating my husband, Andy, he raved about his family’s Easter meal. They’re Polish, and he could not stop talking about his father’s borscht. Now, I’d had borscht before and didn’t really feel the desire to ever relive the experience. But, as I soon came to find out, this special Easter borscht (or barszcz, if you want to go with the Polish spelling) is white, slightly sour, creamy and delicious, rather than the cloying sweetness of the red-beet borscht most people know.
From what I can gather, this soup is only prepared at Easter, and my theory is that it’s because the Poles need to build their strength for the Easter Monday festivities of Śmingus Dyngus, where everyone runs around town throwing water on each other. It’s said girls who get soaked will marry within a year.
But back to the soup. I was heartbroken to find out this year that Andy’s parents won’t be in town for Easter and we wouldn’t be getting our barszcz. So, I’m going to attempt to make it, and the recipe below is what Andy’s father dictated to us (a man who, by the way, doesn’t cook a single thing the rest of the year, probably because he’s so exhausted from his multi-day marathon of Springtime soup-making). In attempting to research this, I found that these Easter Barszcz recipes vary wildly. I can’t vouch for any of the others, but this one is a perfect balance of sour rye, creamy egg, hot horseradish and chewy meat.
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Summary
Most of these products are available at a Polish deli if you can’t find them elsewhere.
Ingredients
- 1 cup rye flour
- Filtered water (for the rye mixture)
- 1 egg, plus more, hard-boiled, for soup bowl.
- 1 to 2 tablespoons salt
- 1/4 cup whole milk or cream
- Fresh grated horseradish root
- Kielbasa
- Ham
- Andrulis Farmers cheese
- Boiled and smoked bacon
Method
- 1. Take about 1 cup rye flour and place it in a 1-quart jar. Fill it with room-temperature filtered (non-chlorinated) water and leave it, lid slightly askew, for three days to a week. During this time, skim the crust off the top. (If you want to hurry the fermentation process, add a pinch of yeast and it should be ready in a day or two.) When the rye mixture is ready, strain it. If it’s too thick, add a little water to it. It shouldn’t be thicker than heavy cream.
- 2. Bring about 2 quarts of water to a boil. Ideally, use water from the Easter ham you boiled or some kielbasa you cooked, but plain water can do in a pinch. Pour the rye mixture in, whisking the whole time (or you’ll get a big noodle in there) and bring it back up to a boil. Reduce the heat so it’s no longer at a boil.
- 3. In a separate bowl, whisk together one egg, 1 to 2 tablespoons salt and 1/4 cup whole milk or cream.
- 4. Pour the egg mixture into the pot of water, making sure not to scramble the eggs (I’d probably temper the eggs by adding a bit of the hot liquid into them before adding them back into the pot of hot water, but who am I to mess with Andy’s father’s proven cooking methods?)
- 5. Bring the mixture to a boil. As soon as it hits a boil, turn it off.
- 6. In individual soup bowls, place a lot of fresh grated horseradish root (none of the jarred stuff) and finely diced kielbasa, ham, firm Andrulis Farmers cheese, bacon that’s been boiled and smoked at the deli (no need to fry it) and hard boiled egg (preferably eggs you’ve had blessed—wait, actually, have all of this stuff blessed by a priest, for good measure). Pour soup on top.
Source: The New York Times
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