Polish Sorrel Soup

Saturday was market day and Toronto is definitely a great place to visit the markets.  One of my favourites is the Evergreen Brickworks Farmer's Market.  It's more than just a market - it's an experience and it's impossible to leave there without feeling enriched somehow.  The vendors are all first class, extremely friendly and great educators.  It's not possible to go to the market without struggling over which slow food vendor you want to satisfy your taste buds with.  This should only be my worst first world problem.  On the trip to the market my friends and I talked at great length about the amazing breakfast crepes and how long the lineups were but so worth the wait.  Frankly, there isn't a vendor there who isn't worth the wait - seriously

When we were in Poland it was always pretty easy to find unique soups with a bit of a sour twist to them.  I had no idea what the main ingredient was but found out it was sorrel.  I found a recipe for this interesting  Polish Sorrel Soup  from Barbara Rolek, Eastern European Food Expert.  Barbara is my "go to" person for all things Eastern European.  But, let me tell you - this is not a grocery store item one finds easily.  I had all but given up when, as I walked through the market....voila .... sorrel!!! I'm sure the vendor thought I had really lost it; who gets so crazy over finding sorrel.  For those who aren't familiar with this ingredient I looked it up on Wikepedia:

 "Sorrel soup is a soup made from water or broth, sorrel leaves, and salt.^[1][2] Varieties of the same soup include spinach, garden orache, chard, nettle, and occasionally dandelion, goutweed or ramsons, together with or instead of sorrel.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} It is known in Ashkenazi Jewish, Belarusian,^[4]Latvian,^[6] Lithuanian, Polish, Russian,^[1][2] and Ukrainian^[3][5] cuisines. Its other English names, spelled variously schavel, shchav, shav, or shtshav, are from the Proto-Slavic ščаvь for sorrel. Due to its commonness as a soup in Eastern European cuisines, it is often called green borscht, as a cousin of the standard, reddish-purple beetroot borscht.^[1][4][3][5] In Russia, where shchi (along with or rather than borscht) has been the staple soup, sorrel soup is also called green shchi.^[7][8] In some cookbooks it is called simply green soup.^[2]

Sorrel soup usually includes further ingredients such as egg yolks or whole eggs (hard boiled or scrambled), potatoes, carrots, parsley root, and rice.^[1][2][9] A variety of Ukrainian green borscht also includes beetroot.^[8] In Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian cuisines, sorrel soup may be prepared using any kind of broth instead of water.^[1][2] It is usually garnished with smetana (an Eastern European variety of sour cream).^[1][2] It can also be akosher food. It may be served either hot or chilled.

Sorrel soup is characterized by its sour taste due to oxalic acid (called "sorrel acid" in Slavic languages) present in sorrel. The "sorrel-sour" taste may disappear when sour cream is added, as the oxalic acid reacts with calcium and casein."

INGREDIENTS

• 1 large peeled and sliced carrot
• 1 bunch fresh parsley
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 peeled and cubed medium potatoes
• 1 chicken or vegetable boullion cube
• 1/2 pound fresh sorrel, washed, stemmed as for spinach and chopped
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Chopped fresh dill or parsley
• 2 hard-cooked eggs cut into quarters

• Prep Time: 20 minutes
• Cook Time: 45 minutes

• Total Time: 65 minutes
• Yield: 6 servings Polish Sorrel Soup

PREPARATION

1. In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, place 6 cups cold water, carrots and parsley. Bring to a boil and add bay leaf, potatoes and boullion cube. Bring back to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are tender.
2. In a large skillet, melt butter and sauté sorrel for 10 minutes. Transfer to the soup and bring to a boil. Reduce heat. Remove bay leaf. Fork blend sour cream with flour and temper with a few ladles of hot soup. Transfer tempered sour cream to soup, stir well and simmer until thickened and just under the boiling point. Adjust seasonings.

1. Portion soup into heated bowls and garnish with chopped dill or parsley and egg quarters.

We finished all the shopping and it was time for our crepes - delicious as always and really quite filling.  I have a friend who is at the market every week.  He's an Italian from Venezuela who has this passion for all things Spanish.  If that didn't confuse you, he's now planning to go to Morocco and expand his offerings with Moroccan flavours.  Jose Arado who is the owner and main chef at Pimenton   is a total joy to be around and has a forever smile on his face and a big hug waiting for you when you come his way.  I hadn't seen him in a while and was very excited to treat me to one of his creations.  Don't forget, I'm full from the crepe but Jose's enthusiasm is spell binding and there's no way to say no.  He brought me this dish of organic greens with Spanish chorizo sausage topped with a soft cooked egg over the top and a home made hot sauce that was entirely "to die for".   Of course I ate it knowing full well I was going to be full beyond belief.

If you didn't click on Jose's site above make sure you do and watch the you tube video. You'll see an array of Jose's creations, his presence at the market and get infected by the amazing Spanish music and his love of food.  Enjoy!!

Cheese Babka

I just returned from trip #3 to Poland.  This trip was quite different than the others.  We weren't on our genealogical journey this time; we were there for Actor Boy's marriage to the lovely "M".  If you believe in fate, this union is one to put in the journal.  Both AB and M were attending the same conference, she from Warsaw and he from Toronto and met in Montreal.  Although many say that long distance relationships are particularly challenging, this one seemed to thrive and after many cross Atlantic visits for extended periods at a time, they decided to tie the knot.

Each trip reminded me of my European roots; the phrases people use to describe things, the quirky shared history that summons both grief and uncontrollable laughter, words in a foreign language that I remember hearing my parents say and most familiar - the food.  I would often think to myself that I used to have this or a version of it at home. And the pastries - simple, plentiful (every street corner type of plentiful) and delicious.  It's easy to see how I developed a love for, no... love isn't exactly the word, it's more like obsession for European cuisine.  It started with Polish recipes and has now spread to the rest of Europe and moving into Asia.  I keep thinking that one of these days my European recipes on Pinterest will just explode but for the time being, we'll go through them one at a time.  It's a good thing there's a fair amount of overlap in European cuisine; often different names for the same thing with maybe just a little twist here or there.  Some recipes have ingredients that are similar but not the same as North American varieties so the challenge is always to recreate flavours with twists here or there.  Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much.

Today I decided to give the Cheese Babka a whirl.  Even the name "babka" is endearing - it means "grandmother" so we associate this sweet with a kindly old grandmother kneading and filling pastries for her family to enjoy.  What could give you a warmer feeling of home than that vision?  Afraid of yeasted doughs?  Don't be.  This recipe is so simple and the hardest part of the whole thing is waiting for the dough to rise.

Dough:

2 pkg active dry yeast
1/2 tsp and 1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup 110 degree water
1 cup milk
4 oz. (1 stick) softened butter
1 tsp salt
3 large beaten egg yolks - reserve 1 egg white for basting top before baking
5 cups all-purpose flour

Filling:

36 oz. softened cream cheese ***
3 large egg yolks
1 1/2 cups sugar

Crumb Topping

8 Tbsp all-purpose flour
8 Tbsp sugar
4 Tbsp cold butter

*** The cream cheese in this recipe is a dry curd cheese or quark cheese that's a full milk variety and when you mix it, becomes very smooth and cream cheese like.  Don't use the Philadelphia style cream cheese.

Prepare 3 - 9x5 bread pans (you can either spray them or grease with a little canola oil)

Preparation:

Stir the yeast and 1/2 tsp sugar into warm water.  Set aside until frothy.

Scald the milk and place in a large mixing bowl or stand mixer.  Add soften butter and stir to melt.   Add 1/2 cup sugar, salt, yeast mixture and the 3 beaten egg yolks.

Add the flour and knead until shiny and elastic.  Place in a greased bowl, turning to coat both sides; cover with greased plastic wrap and let rise until doubled.  This could take a couple of hours.

The Crumb Topping

Mix the flour and sugar and cut in cold butter as you would for a pie crust until it's crumbly.

Assembly

Punch down dough and divide into three equal parts.  Working with one part at a time while covering the rest, roll into a large rectangle 1/8 - inch thick.

Spread dough with 1/3 of the cheese filling.  Fold the short sides towards the centre (about1 1/2 inches of dough) and roll up the long side away from you.( the way you would make a jellyroll)  Place into prepared bread pan.

Brush with beaten egg white and sprinkle with 1/3 of the crumb topping.  Repeat with remaining two dough balls.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rest until the dough rises above the rim of the pan.

Place the rack in centre of the oven and heat to 350 F.  Bake babkas for 40-50 or until an instant-read thermometer registers 190 degrees.  Let cool in pan for 5 minutes.  Using a knife, loosen babka from sides of pan.  Cool completely in the loaf pan.

There's always some learning when we follow a recipe for the first time.  I learned:

1.  Make sure there isn't an overabundance of moisture in your final mixed cheese filling.
2.  Don't be impatient with the rising process.  It takes as much time as it takes and works better when your dough is in a warmer part of your kitchen.
3.  Just because you may like raisins, overloading the babka with goodness isn't always going to get you the outcome you're looking for.  I think I went a little crazy on the raisins.
4.  I didn't put the crumble on the top - I think having it there would have been a good addition  OR I can still put icing sugar over the top.

Sawata

Actor Boy has this idea that doing a theatrical piece with his mother is an interesting work to create.  We started this voyage with a simple improvised stage piece that we (he did most of it) performed for small theater festivals locally and on the west coast.  It was reasonably successful and we had alot of fun comments about how cool for a mother and son to go on stage together.

Not enough.  Actor Boy decided we should do another piece.  Our ancestry is from Poland so his idea was to travel back to Poland and research our geneology and find our Polish roots.  It's been quite a ride and I just returned from our second trip to Poland.  The first trip in November 2013 was about research.  We drove all around Poland's countryside, went to both my parents' home towns, were able to find documents and history, met alot of people and ate alot of Polish food.  It was good.  This trip was slightly different.  We spent 2 weeks in a theatre that was entirely black (they call it a black box theatre - imagine that), working on creating a piece of work, or part of it and then performing for a couple of audiences who would give us feedback and suggestions.  We would start early in the morning and work until about 8 p.m. and start all over again the next morning.  That shattered any notion of this being a trip to a foreign country being even remotely romantic.

The one thing I managed to salvage for my own interests was learning more about Polish food.  Most local food is heavily meat laden but since I was travelling with 6 other people, most of whom were either vegetarian or vegan we didn't spend much time sampling local meat meals.  I did learn to take some meat meals and adjust them and learned a whole lot about salads.

My favourite salad, a potato type salad is called Sawata.  I had to come home and make it right away.  It's a little time consuming with all the tiny chopping but so worth it and I even found some shortcuts.

Ingredients

3-4 potatoes boiled in their jackets and cooled
3-4 hard boiled eggs
2-3 dill pickles, diced small (I used Vlasic pickles)
peas and carrots - I used 1/2 bag of frozen peas and carrots - worked great
(if you prefer you can boil 4 carrots with the potatoes, dice small and add canned,drained peas at the end)
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
1 heaping Tbsp dijon mustard
3-4 Tbsp mayonnaise

Directions

1.  Boil potatoes and cool before peeling
2.  Dice potatoes, eggs, dill pickles really small and add to bowl
3.  Add 1/2 bag or more (1 1/2 cups) frozen peas and carrots
4.  Add mustard and mayo and gently combine all finishing with the chopped parsley.

So so good.  This salad is a staple for all Polish celebrations.  There's really no set way to make it and I've seen it with boiled parsnip in it as well - equally as good.

Braised Polish Red Cabbage

The health benefit of cabbage is not a new and trendy story.  A natural antioxidant and anti inflammatory, it's right up there on the "what to cook for baba" hit parade.  You can, if you're interest read more about the good stuff cabbage has to offer here.

East Europeans have always had cabbage, both green and red as a staple in their diet.  It's simple to prepare and with the right spices, the bitterness is gone and the flavour shines through.

1 medium head of red cabbage, shredded
1 onion, shredded
2-3 Tbls vegetable oil
1 cup water
3-4 Tbsp red wine vinegar
brown sugar to taste
salt and pepper to taste

1.  Wash cabbage and remove outer leaves that are usually dirty
2.  Cut cabbage in half and remove the center core.  Shred as thinly as you can.  Shred onion.
3.  Warm oil in dutch oven or good solid large pot, add cabbage and onion, reduce heat to medium.
4.  As the cabbage releases its moisture, the volume minimizes.  Add water and keep the cooking process at a slow pace until cabbage is soft.
5.  Add red wine vinegar, brown sugar (I used about 1/4 cup) and salt and pepper, mix well and allow to cook a few more minutes.

My mom loved the cabbage!  A hit!!
The condo building I live in has alot of Russian families who live here.  I've spoken to several of them about how they make their cabbage and many have told me to use "sour salt".  If you can find it - it took me a while but it gives it an added kick.