Poltava style borshch with buckwheat halushky

Ivan Kotliarevsky in his famous Eneida describing Ukrainian hospitality wrote about famous ancient dish – Poltava style borshch with buckwheat halushky.

First grind the salo (fatback) using a pestle and mortar – that is a traditional way or mince it using a mincer – a modern way or just cut it in tiny little pieces – anyway your Poltava borshch would taste yummy. Place the salo (fatback) pieces into a 5-6 l pot where you are going to cook the borshch and keep it on low heat until rendered.

While salo (fatback) is being rendered to make lard peel the vegetables. Grate the carrots, finely chop the onions. Sweat the carrots and onion in the lard for 2-3 min until tender. Then pour over about 3.5 litres of water to make no more than 3/4 of the pot and bring it to a boil.

Meanwhile dice peeled potatoes, shred the cabbage. When the broth in the pot starts boiling dip the potato and cabbage along with the peas and boil for 15-20 min.

Grate peeled beetroots right into a wok, add 150-200 ml of the broth from the pot. Simmer for 5 min, then season with salt, pour over beetroot kvass (can be substituted with the same amount of red dry wine, tomate or saurkraut juice, sour cream or 3-4 tbsp of lemon juice), let it start boiling and remove from the heat.

At last add the beetroot to the broth in the pot. Taste the borshch and season with the sugar and chopped garlic as necessary (the point is to balance the taste of the salt, sugar and acid from the beetroot kvass or its substitutes). The very moment the borshch starts boiling remove it from heat – in other case the borshch can lose its bright colour.

Getting down to halushky. Pour 150 ml of boiling water over half of the buckwheat flour and stir well. When the mixture gets cool, add the eggs and the remaining buckwheat flour and knead the buckwheat dough. Bring to boil about 3 l of water.

Shape the buckwheat dough into small walnut-sized balls (halushky). Salt the boiling water, dip the halushky and stir immediately (like boiling vushka to Christmas borshch) to prevent the halushky from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Wait till water boils again, stir once again and simmer for 30 minutes.

Serve the Poltava style borshch with some sourcream, the buckwheat halushky and chopped dill.

See more recipes: Lviv style borshch, vushka to Christmas borshch, beetroot kvass.