Friday, November 2, 2018

Eat Borscht in Russia

Borscht is a sour soup commonly consumed in Eastern Europe and across Russia. It is made of beetroot as its main ingredient, and usually contains other vegetables such as cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes and tomatoes.

I tried it for the first time last month, in a food-court of an underground shopping mall in Moscow, not far from the Red Square. A bowl of borscht in a nice restaurant would probably look something like this:

eatingwell.com
But because I could only afford the fast-food version, this was how mine looked like:



It came with a pierogi, which is a type of dumpling, or in this case, a pie. Not sure if it was meant to be dipped in the soup, but I ate them separately. The beetroot had been boiled to a mush, along with some other equally mushy unidentified ingredient, which I suspect may be onion, my least favorite food in the world. But since it had been cooked for so long, it had lost the disgusting onion taste and texture, so it was fine for me.

The soup had a unique taste that I didn't hate (but didn't love either). I managed to finish all of it because it made me feel pleasantly warm in the unforgiving Russian weather. Besides, I hadn't had a proper meal since I got on the bus to Moscow from Estonia the day before.