Cooking with Ana: Borsch

The other day my mom called on Skype and told me that she prepared such a delicious borsch. So, I decided for today: Borsch. First of all, what is borsch? Borsch is an eastern and central Europe dish which has as the main ingredient beetroots that offer this wonderful ruby color. I, as a moldavian girl, have my own recipe for borsch, which I got from my mom. I like borsch because it’s filled with vegetables, is both healthy and nutritious, and most importantly it tastes just as good when reheated.

So, in order to prepare borsch we need a lot of vegetables. I am a vegetarian, so I did one without meat, but you are free to add which one you prefer.

The ingredients are:

6 medium potatoes, sliced into bite-sized pieces
3 l of water
1 bell pepper, half a cabbage, zuchinni (optional)
2 onions, finely chopped
2 carrots – grated
5 – 6 tomatoes sliced into bite-sized pieces
half of an eggplant (optional)
beans without juice
tomato sauce
oil, chopped dill, petersille, ground pepper, salt, Chilli

First, we boil the water in a big pot, and after add the potatoes. In the same time, all the vegetables must be fried. I fry first onions, than carrots, eggplant, and in the end I add the tomato sauce (I usually add some thym, rosmarin, salt while frying). When all this composition is ready it must be added to the big pot. The sliced tomatoes need to be fried separately, and also added to the main pot. In the end, add the beans and switch to a low heat to cook so all the ingredients mingle. After 10 min, it is necessary to salt, to pepper and to add the chopped dill and petersille, chilli if you want (I just prefer it like this). I turn off the stove after I add all this, because I like the petersille be more fresh than boiled.

Borsch can be served with sour cream, and bread. You can see below the resut (it doesn’t have the ruby color, but is a typical Moldavian borsch and special for people who doesn’t like beetroots), what you can’t know is how tasty it is so you probably should try it on your own.