Too-Many-Vegetables Soup

Yesterday I realized that we had way too many vegetables around that were going to start being too old any day. So I decided to make a big pot of veggie soup using whatever we had around.

Ingredients:
1/2 small red onion
1 large white onion
4 small carrots
2 leeks (bulb and lower leaf portion)
1 medium zucchini
2 big white mushrooms
1 c shredded cabbage
1/4 c parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic
2 T balsamic vinegar
1.5 T olive oil
Salt to taste
A little soy sauce or fish sauce (about 1 t)
1 bay leaf
Water to fill the pot

Method:
Warm the oil in your soup pot. Slice the onions into half rings, add them to the pot and let them saute. Peel and grate the carrots, cut the leeks into half rings, and add them to the pot as well. Salt the vegetables and let them saute. Now add water to fill the pot almost full, and turn the heat up to bring the soup to a boil. Add chopped zucchini, chopped mushrooms, shredded cabbage and garlic. Put in the seasonings: bay leaf, balsamic vinegar, soy or fish sauce, salt and parsley. Add them to your taste. Let the soup simmer until the cabbage and zucchini are soft enough for you.

Notes: I was surprised how good this was. I mean, I was kind of begrudgingly making it, thinking I was basically cleaning out my fridge, and that it wasn't going to taste that great because there was just water, no meat based broth or long-cooking-full-of-goodness vegetable broth. But it turns out it doesn't take a lot of time for the veggies to flavor the water. It only took about 25 minutes or so total. Of course you can use whatever veggies you have around, but I think that the leeks and mushrooms made this especially tasty.

Serving Suggestion: Good with a piece of bread. My boyfriend put leftover roasted chicken meat in his bowl, and he liked it.

Schi

This is a traditional Russian cabbage and potato soup. It's not the fanciest, there are others that are more interesting. But it's hearty and warm and good anyway! Some versions are made with sauerkraut instead of plain cabbage, adding a sour/tangy taste. That's pretty common in Russian soups, to add pickled vegetables or a little vinegar and sugar for a special flavor. I haven't seen that in schi recipes using regular cabbage, but I add a little pickle brine to mine because I like it.

Ingredients:
4 qts beef stock*
2 large potatoes
1/2 small head of cabbage
1 onion
1 T sunflower oil
2 medium carrots
1 medium tomato
Few T pickle brine
Salt to taste

Stock:
Stock is very easy to make. In a large pot, place meat, an onion (halved), a carrot (halved), a few cloves of garlic (whole), couple of bay leaves, some peppercorns (I use a mix of black and white peppers and allspice). Bring to a boil, let simmer until meat is tender. This will depend on your cut of meat, but generally longer time = more tender meat + tastier stock. I let mine go for about 3 hours usually. Meat with a bone gives better stock.

Method:
Remove the meat from the stock and set aside. Bring the stock up to a boil and add the potatoes (peeled and cut into 1/2" cubes). Chop the cabbage. I like to chop it thickly, instead of shredding it, for this soup. After the potatoes have been in about 15 minutes, add the cabbage. Warm the oil in a saucepan. Cut the onion into half-rings and saute in the oil. After a couple of minutes add the carrot (shredded). When it's all soft, add the chopped tomato. Once the tomato is cooked, remove the saucepan from heat. After the cabbage has been boiling about 30 minutes, add the contents of the saucepan to the soup. Add the brine to the soup and salt to taste. At this point you can also chop the meat and put in the soup, but I prefer to serve the boiled meat separately, on the side. Let flavors combine on a simmer for about 15 minutes. Serve.

Notes: This tastes better the next day, after the flavors have mixed even more. I have no idea why tomatoes are included in a traditionally winter time soup, but they are! I've seen recipes that use chicken and chicken broth, if you prefer. To make this vegetarian, I would just use a nice vegetable broth.

Serving Suggestion: My boyfriend claims that this is one of the few Russian soups that is not usually eaten with sour cream. He qualifies this by saying that "of course" a person CAN add it if they want. Put chopped greens (dill, parsley) on top of the soup just before serving.

Onion Soup Gratin

I made this really tasty onion soup recently. It was very delicious! Not as dark brown as the kind I see in restaurants, but very flavorful and slightly sweet. This is the time of year when we can find 5 kg bags of onions for about one euro. So of course I made this soup!

Ingredients:
1 qt beef broth
20 onions
4 T butter
300 mL cider
100 mL white wine
a little dried thyme

Method:
Make a beef broth. I made it in a 5 quart pot. After it's done (or about half an our before it'll be ready), caramelize 20 onions (type doesn't matter) in a soup pot. Go slow, to make sure they don't burn. Deglaze with 1/2 the cider. Keep caramelizing. When liquid evaporates, deglaze again with 1/2 the wine (I used white). Repeat once for each. Add some dried thyme and fill your soup pot with the stock (no meat or bones). I ended up having quite a bit of stock left over for another day. Allow the flavors of the soup to combine for 5-10 minutes on a simmer. Serve.

Notes: This was very time-intensive but so worth it. I don't know how this would taste using a vegetable broth; probably just fine, as most of the flavor is from the onions and the alcohol (and the ton of butter)! It may be a little too sweet though. In the case that you want to use vegetable broth, maybe cut back on the onions by one or two. This becomes much faster if you already have broth ready, but it still isn't exactly fast. The caramelizing and deglazing took about ... 45 minutes maybe? I saved it for a weekend because it was not fast.

Serving Suggestion: To serve, ladle into bowls. Cover bowl with a thin slice of baguette bread (or chunks), and grated Gruyere or Comté cheese. Place under broiler till cheese melts and is golden brown. Alternatively, it is very tasty just ladled into bowls, and eaten with some bread on the side. You could just sprinkle grated cheese on top of the hot soup.

Kvass-Okroshka Update

The Wasa kvass I blogged about turned out alright. When I shook my Snapware container, there was a little, well, not explosion, but leakage. Violent leakage, I guess you could call it. It wasn't unpleasant to drink, but it wasn't something I'd elect to drink if I had other options. It was more like beer than kvass, actually. Homemade kvass isn't as sweet as the store bought stuff, but this was not sweet at all. I think I added too much yeast, and that they ate all the sugar.

However, the kvass was perfectly fine for making Okroshka, which I did do.

And then I made kvass again, using Vollkornbrot, a dense German rye bread that is (very important) sold presliced. Remember, I'm lazy. Oh, and I also bought a 1.5 L glass jar with a screw-top lid to avoid leakage.

I baked the slices of bread, and this time followed directions a bit more closely. I still think there was too much yeast though, because even though this one was better, it still wasn't quite sweet enough. Oh, and I left out the mint, I prefer the taste without it.

So then, I made Okroshka again, using the new kvass. VERY DELICIOUS. We also drank the new kvass, but I dissolved a little sugar in a little water first and we sweetened it with that before drinking.

I also have made Okroshka several times using elben, which is the closest we have here to kefir. It's kind of like a thin kefir. Very similar to ayran, but no salt added. That was very good too.

So, why no Okroshka recipe?

I've been waiting till I take a picture of the stuff, but I just keep eating it as soon as it's served. Seriously, I haven't remembered till after the fact!

Ok, next time, I WILL take a picture. Next time meaning, the next heat wave we get around here (probably around July).

Root Vegetable Soup

This soup was light but tasty, with flavors of spring and late winter.

Root Vegetable Soup

Ingredients:

Water (I probably used about 6 cups)
1.5 cups lamb's lettuce or baby spinach
1/2 large turnip, cleaned, chopped into 1" cubes
1 small rutabaga, cleaned, chopped into 1" cubes
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 cup chopped oyster mushrooms (can use any kind)
2 medium-large onions, sliced into pieces 1/4"-1/2" thick
2 T oil
1 T butter
1 Bay leaf
Salt and Pepper to taste
Soy sauce to taste (about 1 T)
1 small bunch dill, chopped
1 T dried parsley

Method:

Warm the oil and the butter together in a large pot. I use my 3 Qt. pot for all soups. Add the onions, sauteeing them. It helps if you sprinkle some salt over them. I let mine get just slightly caramelized. Add the mushrooms, celery and garlic. Sautee until the celery is really bright green, a couple of minutes. Add the water, rutabaga and turnip. Season to taste with salt, pepper, herbs and soy sauce. Bring to a boil and allow to cook till turnip and rutabaga are soft to your liking (I prefer them not absolutely soft). Just before serving, stir in lamb's lettuce or baby spinach.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: I think the soup may also benefit from a little acidity, like some balsamic vinegar or lemon juice. It's tasty as is, but it's a subtle sort of tasty. The soup doesn't really take long to cook, either. Rutabagas and turnips take less time than potatoes, but if you want this to be more substantial you could add those too. I'm putting this in the "French" section because this just sort of came about from all the great French produce in (one of) my grocery store(s) yesterday. Everything in the soup was from France! It's not that common, we get a lot of produce from Africa and Spain. I try to buy as local as I can, though. *Edit* I just remembered that I put in parsley and dill as well. The dill was from Morocco, so I guess it wasn't a 100% French soup.

CbG: Whole Chickens

Have I mentioned before that my boyfriend can cook? I have? Well, I'll say it again: he knows his way around a kitchen, and there are some things he does better than I do. Not saying that I should be inherently better at it or anything, but I do get a LOT more practice.

Anyway, we are now adding "roasted chicken" to the list of things that BF is responsible for cooking. We've been buying a whole chicken for the past couple of weekends, and I've been using them to make a simple but delicious chicken broth. But this weekend, he wanted to take charge of the bird's lower half, while I made the broth with the breast as usual. The result was soooo good!

My Boyfriend's Roasted Chicken

Ingredients:

Lower portion of a chicken (the back, thighs and legs), reserve the upper (breast, wings) for soup
About 1/4 c mayonnaise
1 t garlic salt
1 t crushed black peppercorns
1 T dried parsley, or 1/4 c chopped fresh parsley

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Sprinkle the seasonings all over the chicken, separating the skin from the flesh. Make sure that you get both the skin and the flesh. Now, spread the mayo all over, especially between skin and flesh. Roast, loosely covered with foil, until juices run clear.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: This was so good. When it finished, we had already eaten something else for dinner (this was intended to be for the next day). It smelled so great when it came out of the oven, that I told myself, "I'll just take a taste." A taste turned into half a chicken!

Simple Chicken Broth

Ingredients:

1 bunch of fresh dill
1 handful of fresh parsley
4 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
3 cloves of garlic
1 small onion
1 medium carrot
1/4 t celery salt
Upper portion of 1 chicken
Water to cover
Salt to taste

Method:

Peel and halve the carrot. Halve the onion and garlic cloves. Wash the fresh herbs, and I like to use a long sprig of dill to tie them into a bunch, to keep them all in one place. Sprinkle the celery salt over the chicken. Place all the ingredients in a large pot, cover with water. Allow it to come to a boil, and simmer for 2 hours, skimming any foamy stuff off the surface. Remove chicken and vegetables. Salt to taste.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: My favorite way to eat homemade chicken broth is simple. Place chopped fresh dill, parsley and onion in a serving bowl, and add steaming hot broth. Cooked rice and some of the chopped chicken is another nice addition.

Mushroom Soup

I've made several impromptu variations of mushroom soup, but this one was really tasty. We had it last night for dinner and today for breakfast. Only I'm worried that in a couple of days we'll be completely mushroomed out, since today I'm going to attempt pierozhki and I've decided on a mushroom based filling.

Oh well. Is it even POSSIBLE to be mushroomed out? I don't think so. At least, I've never gotten there.

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients:

15 g dried mushrooms (I used a variety)
6 medium white mushrooms
About 2 cups fresh oyster mushrooms
1 leek, white and light green parts, washed carefully
1 small onion
1 carrot
1 T butter
1 T oil
Water (I don't really measure, but I'm using my trusty 3 Qt pot if that helps)
Salt and pepper to taste
Bay leaf

Method:

First, place the dried mushrooms in a small pot or bowl, and cover with a couple of cups of hot water. They will need to sit for some time. Meanwhile, chop the onion and sautee in a mix of oil and butter (use only oil to make the recipe vegan). Peel and grate the carrot. When the onion is golden but not at all brown, turn the heat down, add the carrot and sprinkle salt over them. Let the veggies cook on extremely low heat and the salt will pull the water out of them. I don't know if it's the official term, but it's what I call "sweating" the carrots. That sounds kind of gross, actually, maybe I should think of a different word for it. Later. Chop the leek and add to the pot, stirring everything together and adding a little more salt. Chop the mushrooms, add them in, sprinkle with salt again. This routine of add a veggie to the pot, then sprinkle with salt helps take the water out, it also helps make sure the soup is salty enough. I've never once over salted a soup, and using this method I under salt them much less frequently. You can add pepper to taste at this point, too. You want to stir every so often to make sure all the veggies get cooked. By now the dried mushrooms should be soft enough to chop. Remove them from the liquid and add the liquid to the pot of veggies. It's a good idea to pour the liquid through a sieve to remove any grit. Chop the formerly dried mushrooms very finely, and add them to the pot. At this point, I add enough water to fill my 3 Qt pot almost to the top. A measurement doesn't really matter, you can add more or less liquid as your texture preference warrants. Add a bay leaf, stir well and check the taste. If it's good, allow it to come to a boil, and then you can serve it.

Serving Suggestion: This broth is really rich on it's own. BF added cream (goes without saying). I tried it and it was good but I preferred it without. Chopped dill and parsley sprinkled on top is tasty.

Notes: If you have a food processor, the longest part of this is sweating the veggies and soaking the mushrooms (at least 30 minutes, I would say). I guess it's not really a "fast" recipe, but it tastes so good!

Spicy Beef Soup

Last night I found myself confronted with a situation: I had about 1.5 quarts of an exceptionally rich and flavorful homemade beef broth, and no idea what to do with it. It's not that I don't have any soup recipes. I've got LOTS of them, but they're all ones I've tried before. And this broth was so good, I wanted to do something special with it. (How did it get so good, you may ask? Well, the answer to that is that I wasn't in a rush. I put it on the stove and forgot about it for 3 hours.)

This recipe is the result of that event.

Spicy Beef Soup

Ingredients:

Approximately 4 cups good beef broth, chilled, fat NOT discarded
Beef from the broth
Fat from the broth
1 carrot, grated
2 small onions, cut into semi-rings
About 1/4 c chopped pickled zucchini (you can use pickles if you don't have these)
1 c of the brine from the zucchini
2 T tomato paste
2 T ajvar (this is the brand I'm using, but any will work)
1.5 T dried parsley
Salt as needed
1 small potato, chopped into small cubes (I chopped mine to have about 1/4" sides)

Method:

While the broth is still cool and the hardened fat is sitting at the top, remove it and place in a skillet. Add the beef, removed and chopped before chilling, the parsley, and start to simmer the broth. Melt the fat in the skillet, and fry the onion and carrot until they are soft and slightly golden. Stir in the zucchini and the tomato paste. Allow it to cook gently for a couple of minutes, then add to the broth. Add the brine and stir in the ajvar. Salt to taste. You can add more brine and ajvar as your taste warrants. Add the potato, and serve when it's soft.

Notes: Vegetarians can use vegetable broth and omit the beef, of course. Actually, I don't like meat in soup and avoided it. It was still really good. If you don't have ajvar, experiment with paprika, or baba ghanosh, or chopped roasted red peppers ... whatever you've got.

Serving Suggestion: I think it would have tasted good with a little dill as well, but we didn't have any. I liked mine plain, my boyfriend (of course) ate his with a spoon of creme fraiche on top.

Cheap but Good: Tomato Soup

This is easy, fast, cheap and good. It was the first thing I made for my boyfriend on my mission to prove that many American foods can be tasty, AND not make you die of heart disease. What's more American than tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich (which doesn't have to be unhealthy)?

Tomato Soup

Ingredients:

1 small to medium sized onion
1 medium carrot
2 T oil
3 T tomato paste
1 800 g can of peeled whole tomatoes (corresponds to US 15 oz can, I think)
2 cans of water
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic
about 1 T dried parsley
about 1 T dried basil
about 1 T dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Chop the onion, begin to sautee it in the oil. Peel and grate the carrot, add it to the onion. Remove the whole tomatoes from the can and chop them, saving the juice. When onion is soft and translucent, stir in the tomato paste, the chopped tomatoes, and the juice from the can. Also add two canfuls of water, the bay leaf, the peeled and minced clove of garlic. Salt and pepper and herbs to taste. (I add about a T of each herb, but mostly parsley, second most oregano, least basil.) Let it come to a boil and then simmer it until the carrots are soft enough for your taste. For me this can be as little as 10 minutes if I'm in a rush, but it's best if you simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: I think this soup is best with a little sour cream or creme fraiche. I either stir it into the pot at the very end, or let each person put a little on their bowl. I don't sautee the garlic because I like the sharper taste; if you want it more mild, simply add it in when you add the carrots. This is very good even with just bread. I've also tried it with grilled cheese, which was great. Once I added noodles, and that was good, but the soup was much thicker. You could also try adding rice (cooked, or cook it in the soup).

***Cost Analysis***
Can of tomatoes: 82 cents
Carrot: 15 cents
Onion: 10 cents
Tomato paste: 50 cents
Garlic clove: 5 cents
Herbs:
I have large jars of parsley, basil and oregano that each cost about 2 euro and have probably 70 one T servings inside. So those three together cost 9 cents approximately.
The bay leaves came in a bag with like 100 leaves inside, and was also about 2 euro. So one leaf is about 2 cents.

Total cost of soup recipe: 1.73 euro, about $2.33 today

The recipe makes about 5.5 bowls, so that is 31 euro cents ($.42) per small serving (1 bowl), and 62 euro cents ($.83) per larger serving (2 bowls). Small serving is usually enough for me, with a bit of bread and a little sour cream.

Nutritional Info: Each bowl has approx. 110 calories (calculated using www.calorieking.com).

Cheap but Good: Convenience Food Make-Overs

I generally try to cook things from scratch, but being a busy college student, sometimes I need to open a box and have a meal ready in 20 minutes or less. Usually--for myself and others in the same position--that means something like Ramen noodles, mac and cheese, or canned soups. That's also because these items aren't really very expensive; but there's a way to make them even cheaper, tastier and better for you.

The solution is really simple: add a bunch of other stuff, and by "stuff" I mean veggies. If you choose the right ones, it's cheap, and it makes more food so you get more leftovers, and hence more meal for your money.

Some ideas:

For mac and cheese, I like to mix in an equal amount of cooked frozen peas. I love frozen peas, so I buy a huge bag of them and it's very inexpensive. By doing this, I double the volume of the meal for much less money. I don't find that I need any extra cheese sauce, but if you do, then try stirring in a couple of tablespoons of sour cream.

For Ramen, there are a lot of options. Again, I often add the peas. :-) But thinly sliced cabbage is also very good. Cabbage is definitely not an expensive vegetable, and slicing it very thin means it cooks quickly. One of my favorite ways to enhance Ramen: I start with my favorite flavor, Beef and Black Pepper (I think beef flavor works best for this particular flavor combo). I put the water in the pot, add the cabbage, a few mushrooms and an onion also thinly sliced. I stir in the seasoning packet. I let the water come to a simmer. You'll need to use more water than usual if you want to maintain the same soup consistency, because you're going to be increasing the amount of "stuff" in the pot. If you prefer soup with less broth, maybe you don't need to adjust. When the cabbage is just soft (about 10 mins) bring the water to a boil, and then add the noodles and about a cup of frozen peas. Give it a stir, then turn off the heat. I don't like the noodles overcooked, so I let them sit there for 3 mins before eating. Usually just the seasoning packet isn't enough. I add extra salt, pepper, maybe a little soy and chili sauce. But I get easily 3 times the amount of food from one soup packet.

For canned soups (although making your own is cheap, tasty and fun, it's not really fast) you can add extra veggies, cooked rice or noodles, and then keep it's consistency by adding broth or water.

Borsch

I made a big batch of this tasty Russian beet soup before I left, and left it in the fridge for the boyfriend. The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, isn't it? :-) Every cook has his/her own version of this, so don't be afraid to try someone else's! Mine's quite basic, but I love it anyway. And so does someone else!

Borsch

Ingredients:

*For stock:
*2 beef short ribs
*1 onion
*1 carrot
*bay leaf

1/4 small head of cabbage
3 small potatoes
1 carrot
3 small cooked beets
sunflower oil and butter for frying (a tablespoon or two of each)
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of vinegar
2-3 tablespoons tomato paste (I use roughly somewhere between the two)
salt to taste

Method:

*Start by making stock. I use my handy 3 quart pot for this (and for everything). Use a bigger one if you want more stock; I end up with about 2 quarts of quite rich stock. Place the ribs your pot with an onion peeled and halved, a carrot halved and a bay leaf. Add water (I add as much as my pot will take) and bring to a boil, then simmer for 2 to 3 hours, or until meat is soft. Fish out the onion and discard; fish out the carrot and eat it. :-) Remove the meat; take it off the bones and cube it, removing any huge globs of fat. Salt the broth to taste.*

If you already have stock, begin to warm it. For veggies, start with the cabbage; shred it. Cut the potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes (I peel them first). Bring the stock up to a boil, then add the cabbage and potatoes. Grate the carrot and beets. 20 minutes after the cabbage and potatoes were added to the stock, melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the beets. You can add broth from the pot if it's too dry. After the beets sautee about 10 minutes, add the sunflower oil and carrots (my boyfriend's mom fries them separately, carrots in oil, beets in butter. I mix it all together and it's fine). Sautee another 10 minutes. Now add the tomato paste and the sugar and vinegar (I stir them together first in a small glass). Stir well and sautee another few minutes. NOTE: If at any point during the sauteeing the mixture is too dry and may burn, add stock! Now, add the mixture in the frying pan to the pot with cabbage and potatoes and stock. Also add the cubed meat. Let it all cook together for a few minutes, then taste and add salt as needed.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: the best way to serve this is with a generous dollop of sour cream, and chopped dill and parsley scattered over the top! Also have some rye bread on the side. Delicious! You can make the stock beforehand; if you want to take the fat from the stock, just put it in the fridge overnight. The fat will rise and solidify and you can just scoop it off the next day. My boyfriend would be horrified if I did this, though. :-) You can play with the flavor by adding more/less vinegar and/or sugar; I find that the amount listed here works pretty well. You can also use lemon juice instead of vinegar, and experiment with adding a mix of crushed tomatoes, or chopped tomato, and tomato paste. For vegetarian borsch, leave out the meat and use a vegetable stock. For fast borsch, you can use boxed stock (I've used chicken with decent results) and just follow all the directions (except you won't have meat).

Cheap but Good: Chana

This is a very easy Indian recipe. It's perfect for winter: warming, cheap, good the next day, hearty. It's nice and spicy too!

Chana

Ingredients:

1 large can garbanzo beans
2 small onions or 1 large one
1 t cayenne pepper
1 T chili powder
1 T cumin
2-4 T oil
about 5 cups of water
salt to taste

Method:

Open your garbanzo beans, and drain them and rinse them well. Set aside. Sautee chopped onion in about 2 T of the oil. Let them get really nice and brown (but not burned). If you don't let them caramelize, this will have almost no flavor. So be patient. When they're ready, push them to one side of your pot. Pool the oil on the other side by tilting the pot a little. You may need to add a bit more oil if the onions have soaked almost all of it up. Ok, put the pot back on the burner now, and dump your spices into the oil pool (not on the onions). Let them fry for about 30 seconds, and then stir everything in the pot together. Dump the beans into the pot, and stir them well. Let that cook for about a minute, then add the water. Allow it to come to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes. It can cook longer if you want, but should cook at least 30 minutes for nice soft beans. Add salt to taste. You can also add a bay leaf when you add the water.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: This is perfect with a loaf of French bread ... soft on the inside, crusty on the outside. And soup + bread makes for a pretty darn cheap meal. To make the soup more or less spicy, you can change the amount of spices in it. The important thing is the ratio: 1 part cayenne pepper to 3 parts chili powder and 3 parts cumin (ground).

Cheap but Good: Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup

This soup is delicious, low fat/calorie, and full of vitamins! It reminds me of the sweet and sour cabbage soup I used to get at a Jewish Deli style restaurant (Ella's Deli in Madison, WI) when I was a kid, but without the meat. Actually, this recipe came from an attempt to recreate that taste. I use a 3 quart pot to make this.

Sweet and Sour Schi

Ingredients:

1/2 medium head cabbage (I used what was leftover after making Golubtsy)
1 small onion
1 medium carrot
1 T oil
2/3 of a 765 g can of peeled roma tomatoes packed in juice + juice from can
3 T balsamic vinegar
3 T sugar
water
bay leaf
sprinkling of caraway seeds
salt to taste

Method:

Warm the oil in a pot. When it shimmers, you're ready to sautee veggies. First add the onion, sliced thinly in semi-rings, and sprinkle some salt. When it is soft, add the carrot, peeled and diced, and sprinkle salt. While it's cooking you can cut the cabbage. Add the cabbage sliced into thin strips about a handful at a time. Sprinkle salt after each addition, and don't add the next handful until the one in the pot is soft. I do this because I have a small pot; if I put it all in at once, it would be too much. At this point, the salt has caused the vegetables to release their juices, and the veggies are stewing. When the cabbage starts to become soft and translucent, add tomatoes chopped and their juice. Add about a can and a half (using the can from the tomatoes) of water, the caraway and a bay leaf (basically, I add enough to fill the entire 3 quart pot). Bring to a boil and simmer until the cabbage is soft enough to your liking. Stir in the vinegar and the sugar. You can add more sugar if you want it sweeter, less if you like it more sour. Likewise with the vinegar; more if you like it more sour, less if you like it sweeter. Add salt to taste. Serve hot. You can serve it with sour cream (I prefer it without), a lemon wedge, or chopped herbs like parsley or dill. Приятного Аппетита!

Serving Suggestion and Notes: I think that this soup is filling enough that 1-2 bowls is a complete dinner. My boyfriend needs a couple of slices of bread with it. We had this last night for dinner with black (rye) bread. For dessert (and tea today) we had pancakes, the thick kind Russians call oladi. Americans will recognize them as silver-dollar pancakes. Было очень вкусно! You can also serve this with crusty bread or grilled cheese sandwiches.

***Cost Analysis***
Cabbage: 1 head = 1.30 euros. 1/2 = .65 euros
Carrot: 8 carrots = 1 euro. 1 carrot = .125 euro
Onion: ~100 onions = 5 euros. 1 onions = .025 euro
Oil: 500 mL = 5.67 euro. 1 T = 14.79 mL = .168 euro
Tomatoes: 1 can = .82 euro. 2/3 can = .547 euro
Balsamic vinegar: 1 bottle= 250 mL = 1.70 euro. 3 T = 44.36 mL = .302 euro.
Sugar: 1000 g = 1.80 euro. 2 T = 24 grams = .043 euro.
Water: 0 euro
Bay Leaf: ~50 leaves = 2 euro. 1 leaf = .04 euro
Salt: cost negligible

Number of Servings: 8 bowls

Total cost of recipe: 1.90 euro = $2.40 at today's currency exchange
Cost per Serving: .24 euro = $.30

Nutritional Info:
Calories per Serving (calculated using info at www.calorieking.com):70
Calories in Recipe: 559