_Barshck. (Or Polish Beet Soup)_
If you are brave, put three large beets, peeled and quartered into a
glass jar and pour on them a quart of water, add a teaspoonful of salt
and a slice of rye bread. Keep this in a warm place for about five
days. There will form a sour red-wine-like juice with a whitish mold
skin on the top. Don’t lose your courage, take this skin off and pour
off the juice.
Then prepare a quart of beef, pork and vegetable stock and while it
is hot add to it all your beet juice and a bottle of cream which you
previously have beaten with a teaspoonful of flour. Heat and stir it
all just to boiling point, but do not let it boil, and serve with or
without “Ushka” which are fully described in the next paragraph.
_Ushka_
Barshck is really not complete without “Ushka,” and as they are a very
simple dish to prepare you should never omit them.
To make “Ushka” prepare first a fine hash of half a pound of boiled
pork and beef with one small onion, a tablespoonful of flour, salt and
pepper.
[Illustration: Fig. 1]
Make white sauce of butter and flour and a little water, mix this with
your hash, let it stew for a while, then add one raw egg and stir it
madly.
Now mix a dough, using half a quart of flour, one egg, two
tablespoonfuls of water, half a teaspoonful of salt, and butter of the
size of a walnut. Knead this vigorously for half an hour, or until it
is quite smooth.
[Illustration: Fig. 2]
[Illustration: Fig. 3]
[Illustration: One-third size of beets]
Roll the dough out into a sheet 1/8 of an inch thick and cut it into
2½ inch squares. Put on each dough square a teaspoonful of your hash;
fold them diagonally along the line BD (Fig. 1) and press the edges
together, thus joining the edge AB unto the edge CB and AD unto CD.
You will thus obtain the right angle triangle ABD (Fig. 2) with the
hash inside. Now curve this triangle along the hypotenuse BD until the
45 degree corner D meets the 45 degree corner B. Let these two corners
overlap a little and press them together until they stick. The shape
resulting from this operation resembles a pig’s ear, as depicted in
Figure 3.
Now put these _pig’s ears_ or _Ushka_ into boiling water; they will
sink, but that should not distress you. Leave them there until they
come to the surface. Put the Ushka on a platter and pour on them brown
butter with crumbs and serve them as a side dish with _barshck_.