Today again about the Kremlin cuisine. I have already touched on this topic a couple of times, wrote that the heads of the USSR in ordinary life preferred rather simple dishes, these were delicacies served at receptions.
So, about simple dishes.
Nikolai Vasilievich Morozov, Deputy Chief Chef, worked in the Special Kitchen from 1965 to 1991. And in his memoirs I came across the phrase that Brezhnev was very fond of "red" borscht - just the way his mother cooked. And for a long time, the cooks tried to recreate this borscht from his stories. In the end, they succeeded.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to find the recipe for exactly that, "Brezhnev's red borscht", so I had to go the other way, starting from the fact that this borscht was cooked in his family.
Everything is not so complicated here: as you know, Leonid Ilyich was born in Kamenskoye (present-day Dneprodzerzhinsk), and this is the Dnepropetrovsk region in Ukraine. From this I dared to conclude that Brezhnev's red borscht came from these lands.
And then it's elementary, Watson. No, I was not looking on the Internet, I was asking those who had lived in the Dnepropetrovsk region for more than a dozen years. Not on purpose, of course, I went, but Dnepropetrovsk during the Soviet era was one of the largest cities in Ukraine, as long as I remember And there are a lot of people from it.
And almost everyone agreed that the borscht should be "red", and not the usual red (beet).
The recipe, which I liked, was shared by a lady whose great-grandfather and great-grandmother lived in the Dnipropetrovsk region even when it was called the Novorossiysk province.
So, we take:
• Meat on the marrow for a rich broth
• Cabbage (fresh, a little)
• Potatoes (some)
• Carrots (small, one)
• Onion (small, one)
• Tomatoes - about five or six, tomatoes should be with a pronounced taste of tomatoes, not plastic. Five six tomatoes - about three liters in a saucepan. If you cook more soup, there should be a lot of tomatoes. This is one of the main components.
By the way, for those who will be indignant, they say, where are tomatoes from in the twentieth century, I want to remind you: in Russia tomatoes have been grown since the 18th century, in the 19th they are massively grown in the Astrakhan province and delivered to other regions of the country, and in the southern regions by that time they were already used to them long.
• White or red beans, slightly less than a glass
• Garlic - a couple of three teeth
• Salt, pepper, other spices to taste. She especially insisted that no bay leaf was needed!
So, we soak the beans overnight, and from the tour we set the broth to boil on meat with a bone. While the broth is cooking, blanch the tomatoes, peel them and mash them in any convenient way. Grinding through a sieve, as originally suggested, is optional. We send mashed potatoes in a thick-walled dish to boil over low heat.
By the way, when the meat has boiled, we send beans to it - it cooks for a long time, if it boils down - it's okay.
We cook frying almost as usual: onions, carrots, but beets in red borsch - no need. Instead, when the onions and carrots are fried, fill them with our evaporated tomato puree. And quenched a little.
The laying of potatoes and cabbage is traditional. Here it is worth considering that beans also give the borscht density (especially if it is partially boiled), so you should take less vegetables than usual. And ten minutes before the end of cooking, we send onions, carrots and tomatoes to the pan. Salt, pepper, after turning off the heating, add the crushed garlic.
Bon Appetit!