BARSHCK WITH USHKA
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.
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.
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.