This is a dish, I won't say a recipe, that you are frankly unlikely to find anywhere else... Maybe I am wrong.
I save the leftover pan juice, roast potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, pepperoncinis, etc, from roasts: pork, beef, chicken, rabbit, duck, lamb, etc., or such stove top dishes I make.
My family, who don't know any better, refer to this leftover melange as slop. Fair enough.
So, what is the dish? It is a mixture of leftovers, and other things some of you may have on hand.
What is the main ingredient? Slop.
I do various things. This dish today, let's just call it slop borsht.
So, what goes in it? You have to start with the slop.
For slop borsht, I like to have on hand some boiled beet juice from boiled beets, or leftover beet salad, either or both.
I will just say, up front, you don't even have to have the beet juice!
I throw it, however much there is, in a medium sized, preferably enameled or corning type, boiler.
I then add the slop, once again, however much, or little, there is, it doesn't really matter.... that's why I said it is not really a ' recipe '.
What next? I know you can't wait.
I buy and keep on hand organic dill pickles. They are even kosher! So, hypothetically, if you use, say, kosher chicken and other all kosher ingredients in the roast, then this Slop Borsht is kosher slop borsht! But, enough of this aside.
I throw in only the pickle juice, and horde the pickles to eat with sandwiches!
Salt is your enemy in this dish, because this pickle juice is itself very salty, and the slop had had salt added to it, perhaps. For that reason, the best slop for this dish is unsalted slop that you salted only at table with the roast.
The next ingredient makes this dilemma even more apparent. I like to add to slop borsht a goodly amount of organic sauerkraut juice from the jar of kraut you buy in the store. It can be organic, kosher, whatever.
You otherwise throw this great delicious juice away when the kraut is gone! What better way to use it.
Simmer together and serve.
I am sure East Europeans would be all over this dish, sacrilege, etc. But, hey, there are countless borshts.
Why do I say dunce proof? Maybe you're a cooking dunce... Let's say you blunder, in spite of my warnings, about excess salt. You can't even eat it.
What do you do? A dunce throws the whole pot out.
No. You merely dilute it with water, say by half even, if that salty, freeze much of that in glass jars, and serve it to your guests at your next dinner party. You look like a genius, rather than the dunce you know you are.
This post is dedicated to Randy, hardly a dunce in the kitchen.
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