Rosarote Russische Suppe - or call it Borscht!

If the weather is grey and rainy and it's going to be cooler outside it is good to add a dash of color into your life. Yesterday was such a day. It started foggy and humid, turned into cool but sunny and then it started to rain. We didn't feel like going out. But cooking together hot and steamy comfort food seemed to be a good idea.

This is how to cook a pink russian soup - one of my favorites for years during the cooler seasons.

I would like to participate with it to @heart-to-heart 's #veganwednesday Contest + Week 4 Announcement! 🍋🍌🍍🍎 Thank you @heart-to-heart for this wonderful contest! Who would like to participate too can read here more about the Rules. 

It always has to make of red beet and potatoes and typical fall and winter veggies like carrots, leak, celery, cabbage... Aftter writing down my recipe I noticed the 

This is what I used this time:

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp of vegetable oil
• 2 onions
• 1 tsp brown sugar 
• vegetable broth
• 4 or 5 potatoes
• 4 or 5 red beets
• 2 or 3 carrots
• 1 small celery 
• 2 parsnips
• 1 small sweethear cabbage 
• 1 lemon 
• 2 or 3 bay leaves
• some nutmeg
• a few pimentos 
• half a tsp. kummel
• salt and pepper
• soyghurt

Preparations

Cut the onions in finely slices and steam it with the oil a big pot. Then fry them until golden brown. Add the sugar and let it caramelize. Then add the the vegetable broth, the spices and some fine grinds of the lemon.

Cut the potatoes into cubes put them into the pot and let them cook. Cut the carrots and the parsnips into slices and the celery into cubes and let them accompany the potatoes in their pot.

Now comes the bloody part: peel the beet roots and cut them into cubes as well. I recommend to wear kitchen gloves. Otherwise you regret later that day when you have to go to your job as a hand model... 😜

Let the beet roots cook with the other vegetables.

Cut the cabbage in fine pieces as well and put it into the pot. Add more vegetable broth if necessary and let it cook. The sweetheart cabbage is a beautiful vegetable which is much more tender and sweeter than oher cabbages. You could eat it even raw in a salad. Thats why I don't let it cook too long. If I use ordinary cabbage I put it into the pot with the potatoes already.

Let the everything cook until the potatoes are done.

In the end season with pepper, salt and lemon juice.

Serve in a nice bowl with a dab of soyghurt. I mix my soyghurt with some lemon juice, nutritional yeast and salt to turn it into a vegan 'sour cream'.

While eating this 'sour cream' blends into the soup and makes it beautifully pink. That's where the pink or 'rosarot' in the name comes from. 

I use a recipe from a cookbook as an inspiration but change the ingredients depending on the availability. What never should be missing are potatoes, red beets of course, lemon, pimento and bay leaves!

Guten Appetit! 🥕