Eating in the Baltics
I wrote a column last Sunday on international street food - gyros, bratwurst, crepes, tacos - (available at www.sun-sentinel.com/travel - the column, that is, not the food). Monday I got a message from a woman in Lake Worth kindly alerting me to an item I had missed: falafel.
I've had some great falafel around the world, which was part of the reason I left it out: Like the empanada, it is so common it's hard to pick one country as its home.
I e-mailed this to the woman in Lake Worth and soon got a message telling me she was traveling in Lithuania. I messaged her back, telling her to have a bowl of saltibarsciai for me.
Saltibarsciai, or cold borscht, is not a street food, but it's one of the world's great soups. It's as important to the Baltics as gazpacho is to Spain. The Lithuanians, the Poles (who call it "Lithuanian borscht"), the Russians, the Latvians all, come summertime, turn beets into chilled bliss, mixing the juice with kefir, sour cream, buttermilk (depending on the region) and adding to the chopped beets (also depending on the region), pickles, radishes, spring onions, a hard-boiled egg, meat (sometimes), shrimp (rarely), but, always, always, lots of dill.
I made a big bowl a number of years ago and took it to a party, where it sat suspect and mostly untasted. People were alarmed by its flamingo pink surface, the result not, as they suggested, of artificial coloring, but of the simple mixing of beet juice and buttermilk.
Too bad for them. It's not often you find a food that's delicious, refreshing, filling, and healthy. I may make a batch this weekend - and eat it during the summer solstice.
Comments
Hahaha...when I post on Officetally.com (fansite for "The Office" - the Steve Carell version), or (hopefully in the future, as they haven't approved me yet) on Neogaf, my name is TheMoneyBeets. Or maybe it's just MoneyBeets. I forgot. It's from a Dwight Schrute "Office"
quote...the Schrutes own a beet farm in Scranton, PA, and Dwight described putting the best looking, or "money" beets front and center for attractiveness. One of my other favorite Dwight quotes is when he was talked about "resorbing" his twin in utero, therefore giving him the strength of "a grown man and a little baby." I'm a dork.
About soups - I made butternut squash soup for a dinner party I had a few years ago...that s**t was good but but I think it clogged my arteries for at least a year...2 whole packs of cream cheese went into that sucker! Also, they are very hard to peel...I couldn't figure out a good technique. I made Jason do it and he almost stabbed himself.
For me, the best soup will always be my grandma's pastina. I used to eat it "dry" so it's almost like risotto, with half of a bouillon cube, a pat of butter, some pastina (little stars or orzo), and parmesan. It's so simple, but so good...I make it for my sick friends and they become addicted to it.
I make soup for dinner at least twice a week, usually...but I keep it pretty simple, usually just barley, lentil, or split pea soup...smells like death but we get over it pretty quickly. Jason likes chili, but I can get sick of that easily. I've tried to make Kimchi Chigue (don't know if I'm spelling it right - chee-gay) but I can never make it as good as authentic Korean restaurants. Once, I made a good sausage and escarole soup, and a few months ago I made a cream of corn soup with bacon garnish (I got the recipe from "Gourmet" magazine...another excuse for coronary thrombosis). Thing is, I don't really have the patience to dig out my blender and mash up soup products...I like meals that I can just throw together easily with random things I find in my fridge or cupboard. Anyway, next I want to learn how to make tortilla soup. Mmmmm...
Now I'm hungry and I am going to make some Trader Joe's sweet potato fries. I know you're jealous.
Posted by: jen | June 19, 2008 10:40 PM