The bowl of borscht pictured above is not a soup. At least, it is not a soup unless you want it to be. Borscht can be served as a hearty stew and as a cold gazpacho-like drink. It’s your call.

However you serve it, borscht is terrific tasting. Beet borscht is boldly beautiful in the bowl, too. (Try to say that fast–preferably not while you have a mouthful of borscht lest you end up trying to scrub beet stains off your dinner guests.)

We’re most familiar with the beet version of borscht but there are a number of variations—sorrel borscht, rye borscht, cabbage borscht—not to mention dozens of different toppings ranging from apples to zucchini to beans to hard-boiled eggs.

Borscht has ancient origins in the Mediterranean but in more recent times has come to be associated with Eastern Europe and Russia. The Ukraine, where the most iterations of borscht are served, claims it as its national soup and many Ukrainians get downright testy when someone refers to beet borscht as a “Russian” dish.  (Do we have a national soup? Just curious.)

In fact, there is a profound reverence for borscht among Ukrainians. Here, for example,  is Ukrainian chef Sasha Pogrebinsky’s paean to her mother’s borscht, “…When she prepares it the lovely fresh scent of beets and dill and cabbage slowly stewing and brewing spreads like a sweet cunning song of a siren through the high ceilings and hallways of our house in Cleveland, entering all the rooms, going up and down the stairs, spinning like a miraculous cloud in those high ceilings. Everything that is good on this Earth is in borscht.”

Originally borscht was made with hogweed stems that were fermented for several days and then added to the borscht. The fermented hogweed gave the soup/drink/stew a sour flavor with the pickled hogweed tasting like something between beer and sauerkraut. Later, it became common to make the soup with pickled beets. Many modern cooks give the soup a sour pop by adding ingredients like lemon juice, vinegar, a generous dollop of sour cream or by substituting sauerkraut for the fresh cabbage called for in many recipes.

A glass of borscht is also sometimes given an extra kick by adding a shot of iced vodka. (Those Ukrainians know how to party!)

This recipe serves ten, but don’t let that put you off. Like women, borscht gets better as it ages.

This is my adaptation of a recipe for Ukrainian Red Borscht Soup from the AllRecipes site. The link to the original recipe appears at the end of this post.

Recipe: Borscht
3 medium beets (peeled and shredded)
3 carrots (peeled and shredded)
3 medium baking potatoes (peeled and cubed)
1 T. vegetable oil
1 medium onion (chopped)
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
3/4 C. water
1/2 medium head of cabbage (cored and shredded)
1 8-oz. can diced tomatoes (drained)
3 cloves garlic (minced)
salt and pepper to taste
1 t. white sugar (or to taste)
1/2 C. sour cream (for topping)
1 T. chopped fresh parsley or a sprig of dill for garnish

Directions:
Bring 2 quarts water to a boil. Add shredded beets and cook in boiling water until the beets have lost their color. Add shredded carrots and cubed potatoes and cook until tender. This will take about 15 minutes. Add shredded cabbage and diced tomatoes. Continue cooking until the cabbage begins to soften.

Meanwhile, heat 1 T. oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and saute until onion is tender. Add tomato paste and water to the sauteed onion and stir until mixed. Transfer the onion-tomato water to the soup pot. Add the minced garlic to the soup and turn off the heat. Let soup stand for 5 minutes. Taste and season with salt, pepper and sugar. Add more water if your borscht is too thick.

Ladel into soup bowls and garnish with sour cream and parsley or dill.

Here is the link to the original recipe from the AllRecipes site:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/84450/ukrainian-red-borscht-soup/?internalSource=search%20result&referringContentType=search%20results

I was shopping in Sprouts recently and found myself following the wonderful scent of fresh nectarines wafting across the store when I ran into a young man with a man bun who was on the same mission.

“I could smell the nectarines from across the store,” I confessed a little sheepishly as we converged at the nectarine display.

“Me, too,” he said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

My heart melted. How many people do you find in life who can recognize the scent of nectarines?

So, bags of nectarines in hand, we ran away for a lost weekend. (OK. I made that last part up.)

Life is good, though.

It is stone fruit season.

I can NEVER get my fill of cherries, nectarines, peaches or apricots. But, truth be told, my heart belongs to plums, particularly plums with deep red flesh. I think they are beautiful, too.

So, what is it with stone fruits? They appear in abundance at farmers markets this time of year and then, seemingly, disappear in the blink of an eye.  Here is their story.

Stone fruits are members of the rose family.

Fifteen species of stone fruits are native to the northern hemisphere but the “stars” of the stone fruit world originated mostly in Asia. The peach, for example, is believed to have reached the Mediterranean region from China (via Persia after which the peach gets its latin name–Prunus persica) around 300 BCE. Cherries originated in western Asia and southeast Europe. Apricots were imported into the Roman Empire from their native China.

Almonds are related to stone fruits, too. Domesticated by the Bronze Age, almonds are the seed of a drupe, a stone fruit closely related to the peach and the plum.

With modern hybridization techniques, there are many many types of stone fruits and lots of crosses. Most of us have heard of pluots (plums crossed with apricots), but the possibilities are endless. Have you, for instance, heard of apriums (apricots crossed with plums with the emphasis on the apricots), or peacotum (a peach, apricot and plum cross)? How about pluerry (a cross of cherries and plums)–that sounds really interesting.

Stone fruits are a good news bad news story. The good news is that they are rich in antioxidants, so they are good for you. The bad news is that their tissues break down and turn mealy in cold storage, making their season shorter than that of fruits like apples and pears. Also, because stone fruits do not store starch in their tissues and, therefore, don’t continue to ripen after harvest, they get softer but they don’t get sweeter. Bummer.

I’m not the only one to believe that stone fruits are one of Mother Nature’s true works of art. Artist and Syracuse University art professor Sam Van Aiken has produced grafted stone fruit trees as art projects. His trees can now be found in museums and personal art collections. For us Californians, one of his trees is planted at the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose.

Here is an artist’s rendering of what one of Van Aiken’s trees will look like at maturity. Those beautiful colors remind me of the delicate pink and lavender jades I admired in Southeast Asian jewelry stores. What could possibly be more lovely?

Here is a link to a video about Van Aiken’s art projects. It is worth your time to watch. In a world that has seemingly gone mad, it is comforting to watch a gentle man pursuing beauty for no other reason than the enjoyment of the tree’s beauty and the connection it’s creation gives him to nature and conservation. (Van Aiken only uses heirloom, native and antique varieties of stone fruits in his grafts. When his trees fruit, people can sample varieties of fruit seldom available in markets.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik3l4U_17bI

Like Van Aiken’s vision of “The Tree of 40 Fruits,” this stone fruit cake is a real stunner. It is red. It is orange. It is purple. It sits on your table and it glistens.

If you are one of those people who shuffles into the kitchen for a late night indulgence (you know who you are), what could better brighten the depths of any midnight than a generous slice of this cake? It wouldn’t hurt to keep a photo of the tree of 40 fruits on your refrigerator either. It is an ode to beauty.

The link to the original Gourmet Magazine recipe appears at the bottom of this post.

Recipe: Peach, Plum and Blueberry Cake

Pastry
1 1/2 C. all-purpose flour
1/2 C. sugar
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 stick (1/2 C.) cold unsalted butter (cut into 1/2 inch cubes)
1 large egg
1 t. vanilla

Filling
1/2 C. sugar
2 T. all-purpose flour
1 T. quick-cooking tapioca
2 lbs. peaches or plums or a combination
1 C. blueberries
1 T. fresh lemon juice

Directions:

For Pastry
Using your food processor, pulse together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt until well combined. Add cold butter cubes and pulse until the flour mixture resembles coarse meal with some pea-sized lumps of butter in the mixture. Add egg and vanilla and pulse until the dough clumps and begins to form a ball.

Press the dough onto the bottom and evenly as far as you can way up the sides of a springform pan with floured fingertips. Chill pastry in the pan for about 10 minutes until it is firm.

Filling
Put your oven rack in the middle position in your oven. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Grind 2 T. sugar with the flour and the tapioca in a heavy-duty blender or food processor. You want this mixture to be powdery. Transfer this mixture to a large bowl and stir in the remaining  6 T. sugar. Add the peaches (and/or plums), blueberries and lemon juice and gently toss the mixture to coat the fruit. Spoon the filling into the chilled pastry and bake (loosely covered with a sheet of foil) until the filling is bubbling in the middle and the crust is golden. This should take approximately 1 and 3/4 hours.

Take cake from the oven and cool for 20 minutes on a rack. After 20 minutes, run a knife around the edge of the cake and remove the sides of the springform pan.

Let cake cool and serve either warm or at room temperature.

Cook’s Notes: This cake is at its most flavorful and beautiful on the first day after baking. The editors of Gourmet included a note with this cake recipe cautioning cooks that the cake can burn if cooked as directed in a dark pan rather than a light-colored metal pan because of the cake’s high sugar content. They recommended that those using a dark-colored pan should reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees.

Here is the link to the original Gourmet Magazine recipe for this wonderful cake:

http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/2000s/2005/08/peachberrycake.html

Does your food smile?

Superstar (and perfectionist) chef Yotam Ottolenghi has been known to empty shelves displaying food in his delis because of the smile factor (actually, the no smile factor).

In Ottolenghi’s food world, you have to be able to taste the food before you raise your fork, as New Yorker food writer Jane Kramer put it in her lengthy 2012 profile of Ottolenghi, The Philosopher Chef.

That means the food has to be as beautiful as it smells. The senses, he says, have to work together. The food has to “smile.” That’s his aesthetic.

Little wonder, then, that his cookbooks are a feast for the eyes with gorgeous photographs of colorful and beautifully-plated food. If you are in the mood to add another cookbook to your shelves, Ottolenghi’s cookbooks include Plenty, Plenty More, Jerusalem, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook and Nopi. I own them all and I’ve spent many a happy hour thumbing through their beautiful pages for cooking inspiration.

So, who is Ottolenghi?

Simply put, Yotam Ottolenghi is hot stuff–a culinary phenomenon. He operates a number of restaurants and delis in Britain, and has won numerous accolades from, among others, the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He writes a regular food column for The Guardian. He’s cooked for the Queen, too.

Jerusalem-born Ottolenghi, didn’t start out to be a cook. Far from it. He earned degrees in philosophy and comparative literature in “the genius program” at Tel Aviv University where his master’s thesis addressed “the ontological status of the photographic image in aesthetic and analytic philosophy.” What?  (I’m going to ask my photography teacher, Al Nomura, to explain that topic at our next class.)

His cooking borrows liberally from the cuisines of the Middle East–his native Israel but also Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran as well. Some have characterized his bold cooking style as “noisy.”

Here is a recipe I’ve enjoyed from his cookbook Plenty More. Mixing fried eggplant, squash and peppers in a pungent, garlicky yogurt sauce and topping it with a chile herb oil, this dish is downright grinning.

Here is the New Yorker link:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/03/the-philosopher-chef

Recipe: Mixed Vegetables and Yogurt with Green Chile Oil

3 large plum tomatoes (each cut into four wedges)
2 medium zucchinis or yellow squash (cut into 3/4 inch chunks)
1 large eggplant (cut into 3/4 inch chunks)
2 large red peppers (seeds removed and cut into 3/4 inch chunks)
3/4 C. Greek yogurt
1 large clove of garlic (peeled and crushed)
1 T. shredded fresh mint
1 1/2 t. dried mint
1 1/2 t. lemon juice
Salt and black pepper

Chile and herb oil
1 green chile (coarsely chopped)
2/3 oz. flat-leaf parsley
1 T. chopped mint
1 t. ground cumin
1/4 C. olive oil and salt to taste

Directions:

In an oven that has been preheated to 325 degrees F., roast tomatoes that have been sprinkled with 1/4 t. salt for 40 minutes. Remove and set aside to cool.

Prepare herb oil by combining all ingredients in the bowl of your food processor with a pinch of salt. Process until you have a smooth, thick sauce. Add extra olive oil as necessary.

Pour 2 inches of a neutrally-flavored oil (canola, grape seed, sunflower) into a heavy pan. Heat until boiling. Turn heat down to medium high and fry eggplant, zucchini and red pepper in batches until the vegetables are a light brown. This will take about 12-15 minutes for each batch of vegetables. Remove from pan and place in a colander to drain. Sprinkle with salt.

Combine yogurt, garlic, fresh and dried mint, lemon juice and black pepper in a large bowl. Stir. Add vegetables and cooked tomatoes to this mixture and gently stir. Put this mixture on a platter and drizzle the herb oil on top. Serve at room temperature with fresh pita bread.

Cook’s Notes: I had trouble getting the chile oil thin enough using just 1/4 C. olive oil. I drizzled some extra olive oil on the dish before serving. I prepared this dish following the recipe from Ottolenghi’s cookbook Plenty. I have since found that a slightly different recipe has been posted online on Ottolenghi’s website. In that on-line recipe, he uses some dill in the chile oil. Sounds good. I’ll try that next time.