Borscht by Choice

photo courtesy joe lingeman. **we ate the soup before we took the picture.

Friday night, I did the unthinkable.

I made borscht.

By choice.

Worse, I made my boyfriend eat it.

For Shabbos.

Having recently reinstalled myself in the great white north, and anticipating the famously long and cold winters, I decided to experiment with this oft-dreaded dish.

I followed the Bittman recipe, which calls for boiling three pounds of chopped beets and one onion in six cups of water.

After the mixture softens, Bittman says to beat in two eggs. I used one. Then he says to add the juice of one whole lemon.

I upped the acid Bittman suggested, using champagne vinegar instead of lemon juice alone. I also served it with mini creamer potatoes and sour cream mixed with champagne vinegar and dill.

On the next go-round, I'm going to experiment with adding turnips to the broth. And I'll serve it warm, instead of as a vichyssoise. I'm also thinking -- per the advice of my collaborator and friend -- to substitute the traditional potatoes with a blue cheese crostini.

I'm also thinking about putting horseradish (homemade, from the root) into the stock. Is this suicide? Or worth a shot?

Why Ashkenazis hate Sephardim

Just returned from Being Jewish in France, which debuted in the U.S. back in January as part of the Jewish Film Festival but was so popular it's having a New York reprise. Directed by Yves Jeuland (not a fake name, though the similarity of Jeu and Juif/Jew is pleasing), the film tours French anti-Semitism from the Dreyfus Affair to the contemporary Jew-hating going on in the bainlieues. (Which, by the way, I witnessed firsthand back in 2003, when I was studying in Paris - but that's another story, for another post.)

The upshot? Jews are the canary in the goldmine of democracy. When things start to go south, in a democratic sense, the Jews get it. So I guess we're screwed.

The film also touched - briefly - on the difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardic cooking. The Ashkenazis, declares one (Ashkenazi) woman, have so few recipes they can barely fill a book: gefilte fish, kneidlach (called kreplach in our house, i.e., they taste like krep/crap), and dried fruit. I would add to that list tuna casserole, which I think that I mentioned previously my mother used to threaten us with, and also carrot tzimmis, the smell of which I considered my own private nightmare. Also, how could I forget? Cholent, derma, and marrow -- the latter one eats by poking out the meat from the vertebrae and then smearing it onto challah.


Really, we are gourmands.

Sephardics, by contrast - these people eat merguez sausage, they use cumin, chili peppers. No wonder the Ashkenazis hate them. Yekkes are biologically incapable of digesting this stuff.