Blini and Borscht

For today’s lunch, we decided to make a meal with a Russian twist. This culinary adventure began with an appetizer consisting of sourdough buckwheat pancakes, also known as blini. We followed this up with our main course, a vegetable stew with beets that is known as borscht.

Borscht is one of the most famous dishes in Russia, though its popularity does not stop there, also being widely consumed in Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania. Every nation (and every cook!) prepares it their own special way. Originally, the main ingredient was a wild-growing plant (Heracleum sphondylium), which is called “borshchevik” in Russian. From this, the dish came to inherit its name. Later, the “borshchevik” (known as hogweed in English) was replaced with beetroot, which has come to be the characteristic ingredient of this soup, giving it its unique color and taste. Other ingredients vary greatly but may include cabbage, carrot, garlic, onions, and potatoes. Sometimes traditional borscht also contains meat, but it is easy to make without. Vinegar is sometimes added to the soup to give it a sour taste. Similar methods of soup-making are shared among many Slavic nations.

Many recipes involve an incredibly complex preparation, sometimes involving cooking meat, potatoes, and cabbage in one pot while beet and onion and carrot are cooked in another; a third pot is used for mixing everything together. That being said, we like to keep things quick and simple at Hungry Pumpkin, so we opted for a simpler method; it definitely doesn’t hurt our feelings to have fewer dirty dishes to clean!

The blini is also a traditional dish from Russia and Ukraine. They are similar to pancakes except that they are made from leavened dough; they are also mostly made from buckwheat flour. Like pancakes, they are originally made with milk and eggs, and they are often served with sour cream and caviar. Naturally, we made a vegan version of this unique dish.

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Recipe, preparation, and cost

The bini were prepared from buckwheat and flax flour, yeast, and water. Once we had mixed the dough, we let it sit in a warm place for an hour to allow the yeast to rise. We then cooked the pancakes in a pan with a bit of oil just as you would for regular pancakes. To season our bini, we made a horseradish and apple spread. Raw apples slices, horseradish, a tablespoon of peanut butter, and a bit of salt and pepper were all blended together. Just be wary, because too much horseradish will give this sauce much more of a kick than most of us would like! Since bini are traditionally eaten with caviar, we made our own vegan version. We soaked chia seeds in the remaining beet juice until they had become mucousy. We then seasoned it with a bit of salt, pepper, and cumin.

To really make for a healthy lunch, we also made a cabbage salad with white beans, which we salted and seasoned with pumpkin oil.

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The price of our lunch for 4 came out to under 3€, meaning less than 0.70€ per person! The reason for the low price is that we mainly relied on seasonal ingredients available in our local store. The most expensive ingredient was the buckwheat flour and then the beets. We could have gotten the beets even cheaper though, as we had bought them already cooked, which is a bit more expensive than raw.

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Nutritional Value

If you have questions about today’s lunch (or ideas for future lunches) then feel free to write to us at info@hungry-pumpkin.com and we will get back to you!

Have a great weekend!

-The Hungry Pumpkin Team