Is Any Dill Involved

 

Borscht.  I had a Ukranian neighbor who lived in the same Foreign Experts Builging there at the East China Normal University in Shanghai in 1993.  She made wonderful borscht.  She didn't speak much English.  And it was very sad when they fired her all of sudden that winter and she had to depart, abruptly.  

There is a bottle of Gold’s Classic Borscht from Brooklyn, up in my cabinet. I bought it at Adams about two weeks ago.  At first, I didn’t have any sour cream.  I’m not gonna plop ricotta cheese in there. Then I thought:  “I need dill.”  If you’re gonna do this you need fresh dill.  All requisite ingredients are now accounted for.  But still, what goes with borscht?  You don’t want beets with Italian.  It’s not gonna fit with Indian food, nor does it blend with the soy sauce flavorings of a Chinese meal. 

Tonight was baked potatoes and ears of corn and a salad and some grilled veggie burgers with heaps of tonkatsu sauce.  I considered the bottle of borscht.  We didn’t need anything else.  I tried the idea of beets on in my mind and was not repulsed.  That’s it than.  The container and all the finely minced pieces of beet, slide into the pan and I made off to dice some dill. 

My little one is very unlikely to touch the borscht.   She will absolutely reject it if there is any dill involved.  I know this, because we all spent nearly six days together on the Trans Siberian Rail Road.  There were meat pies and there were veggie pies and there was borscht.  The cinnabar soup was always served with fresh dill.  I had it every day.  Loved it.  They had it once, maybe twice and it seemed to do permanent damage to their assessment of beet soup and the fresh taste of dill. 

Monday, 03/29/21