SPEEDY BEETROOT SOUP

with my housemate Wojciech

If you’re familiar with a traditional Polish Barszcz (Borscht) you might be aware that it can take several days to make, require homemade beef bone broth, fermented beet juice and a whole lot of cooking that doesn’t quite lend itself to a speedy lunch. If, like me, you love the flavour and would like to learn how to make a speedy 30 minute version that also happens to be vegetarian, then this week’s newsletter is for you.

To develop this recipe, I sat down with my Polish housemate Wojciech. Now before we really get into the soup of it all, a quick but necessary word about Wojciech. I met him in the summer of 2020, when he first moved into the warehouse, at the time a perfect stranger to me. Over the nearly five years we have lived together, he has become one of my closest friends and allies. He is fiercely loyal, kind, thoughtful and without doubt has the power to make me laugh in even the bleakest of moments. I don’t think Woj will mind me saying that when he moved into he warehouse he wasn’t the most confident cook. He’d grown up in Poland eating a very traditional diet and was unfamiliar with a lot of the cooking techniques, ingredients and meals that we ate in the warehouse. But over the years I have seen him build his confidence, expand his repertoire and truly blossom into a wonderful home cook.

Wojciech taught me how to make Pierogi, a recipe that I’ve developed and written into my cookbook ‘In for Dinner’, he hands down makes my favourite pantry pasta and has been voluntarily testing and making several recipes from my book to great success. For someone who wasn’t the most naturally confident cook, to move into a house whereby you are expected to feed people once a week, Wojciech has taken that commitment and really ran with it. I will always be in awe of his commitment to improving, trying new things and training his taste to enjoy (more accurately, withstand) mine and Pier’s taste for chilli. Wojciech is one of life’s great people, an invaluable friend and honestly someone I consider family at this point.

Now that we’ve got that cleared up, let’s get onto the soup. Wojciech spoke to his mum about her recipe and got a few pointers on how to begin with an authentic Borscht, learning that we would need to procure a beef bone, fermented beetroot juice and even little Polish dumplings called Uszka if we were lucky . We soon realised it wasn’t realistic for us to make this sort of Borscht on the reg, even living somewhere like London with easy access to Polish supermarkets. So we decided to make a soup with the same energy, but taking a fraction of the time, and keeping it vegetarian.

I hope you enjoy this soup as much as we did and if you don’t know much about the Polish cuisine, I heartily recommend you explore all the many delights it has to offer - you won’t regret it.

This soup is a perfect recipe to batch make and have on hand to keep you fuelled all week, it freezes incredibly well and is also a good one to make and take to a friend who might need a little extra loving care. Trust me on the raw garlic and vinegar at the end, it gives the soup that quintessential punchy flavour that we associate with Borscht. If you don’t have or can’t find dried porcini mushrooms, a simple vegetable stock from a cube will do just fine. You can easily make this vegan by using a plant based butter, skipping the eggs and serving with a vegan yoghurt, rather than sour cream.

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp olive oil

1 x onion, thinly sliced

1 x carrot, peeled and sliced into rounds

1 celery, diced

1 x leek, diced

1 tsp sea salt

0.5 tsp ground black pepper

30g dried porcini mushroom, soaked in 2L of boiling water (or a vegetable stock cube)

500g cooked beetroot, half diced and the other half grated

2 x bay leaves

1 tsp ground all spice

6 cloves of garlic, grated

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tsp caster sugar

To serve: boiled eggs, Polish sour cream, sauerkraut, chopped chives and a good hunk of bread.

1. Start by melting the butter and olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan over a medium high heat.

2. Add the onion, carrot, celery, leek, salt and pepper and cook down for 10 minutes until the vegetables are translucent and beginning to colour.

3. Drain the porcini mushrooms and add all the mushroom stock to the pan, reserving the soaked mushrooms for another use (I fried mine up in garlic and olive oil and served them over rice with grated parmesan -NEXT LEVEL)

4. Bring the pan to the boil and stir everything together.

5. Add the beetroot and simmer for 10 minutes.

6. Next add the bay leaves, all spice, garlic, vinegar and caster sugar. Lower the heat and stir to combine.

7. Taste the soup and add more vinegar, salt or sugar to your taste.

8. Serve up into deep bowls topped with boiled eggs, sour cream, sauerkraut and chopped chives.

9. Slather a hunk of bread in good salted butter and dip it into the soup - enjoy.