Day 272: Caraway Take 1

This past weekend, I mentioned cleaning my spice jars and wondering what to do with caraway.  Today was my first experiment with it. 

Loving borscht and not having made it in forever, when I came across this recipe it seemed the thing to do.

So I grabbed a beet or two

(I might have to put this photo up in my kitchen.  I'm surprised how much I like it)

If you want to follow along, go print up the recipe, and I'll bring you through it.

Recipe calls for thinly slicing the potatoes and beets.  I decided to grate them instead, to make it a bit more palatable for the kids.  Didn't think they'd eat a big hunk of beet.  So I ran the beets and potatoes through the grater attachment to my food processor. 

Peeling the beets is so fun.  You get to dye your hands like this:

The recipe says to put the potatoes and beets and broth in a small saucepan, which I did.  But then it says to put the onion, caraway, and butter in a large skillet.  I didn't see how everything was going to fit in the skillet once all the vegies were added, so I sweated the onion in my soup pot.

Here's the caraway going in!

Using caraway this week as in the spice post?  Check.  Note the pink onions in the pot?  Gotta hate cutting yourself while cooking.  Hehe.  I used the same knife that I peeled the beets with to chop the onion, and I DIDN'T RINSE IT FIRST.   Pbthst.  Sue me.  Pink onions.  Serves them right for making me cry, I say.

After putting the caraway in, I decided it didn't smell caraway-y enough so threw in a bit more.  Probably another 1/2 tsp.  I used more dill than called for as well--just chopped up a bunch and threw 'er in.  There was some left-over pork rib that was in the fridge that needed to be used up, so it was chopped up and in it went.  Used a small can of tomato sauce instead of tomato puree. 

Other than that, recipe is as in the link.

And it was really, really yummy.  Served it with some sour cream, the kids thought it was fun turning the soup pink.  And both inhaled it.  J took a small lick of it at first to check it out, and her eyes got all round and "YUMMY!" and it was downed.  A took a little more time, but he liked it, too, which is a miracle in our house, Mr. Picky that he is. 

 

Definitely will be making this again.  A good reason to keep caraway on the spice rack.