Comments on: As The Garden Grows….

By: Barbara

Barbara — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 04:29:40 +0000

Tanna–beets are delicious straight from the garden. I have some in the fridge from the CSA I need to use up….probably will roast them and have them with chevre.

Bomboniera, you are welcome. I am glad that the soup tasted good–and you are right–low and slow is the way to cook buffalo!

Dan–yes, the bit about anthocyanins is from the top of my head. Yes, I know, I have all sorts of food facts crammed up in my head. Probably more than is generally for my own good.

I don’t think that even if my cherry tomatoes attacked, they would do much damage. They are much too wee. But, I do like the picture of Bry and the parachute–too funny!

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:28:13 +0000

I hadn’t seen the tomato plants in a while. The last time I saw them, they were almost my height. I was expecting the nasty storms we’ve had over the last couple days to have caused some damage to them.

Incidentally, have you seen “Attack of the Killer Tomatos”? Should we start to prepare?

(The image of Bryian running down the streets of Athens in his motorcycle goggles with a parachute trailing out behind him is just too good not to share.)

“Buffalo Borscht.” Now THAT is a great name for a band!

Also, I’ve gotta ask Barbara. Did the whole thing about anthocyanins come from you going, “You know, I’ve read about that somewhere, I think it was in this book…” at which point you go, look up the relevant information and kindly pass it on, OR did that whole post come directly out of the vast library of epicurian brilliance that’s folded so neatly into your gray matter?

By: bomboniera

bomboniera — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 14:08:19 +0000

Thanks for the info! I appreciate the help. I know the color will boil away into the water, but I never realized it would go away completely – I assumed, in a pot of soup, it would just stay in the broth. I’ll definitely follow your advice next time. I’ve made borscht on the stove before, but I wanted to go with long, slow cooking so the buffalo wouldn’t dry out, and it did work on that account. Like I said, it tasted good, just wasn’t the right color.

By: tanna

tanna — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 06:29:18 +0000

It is fun that different kinds of tomatoes really do perform very differently. The one yellow tomato plant I put out this year is producing like not tomorrow.
Now, I’m wanting beets also.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 03:21:04 +0000

Bomboniera–the color from the beets comes from compounds called anthocyanins, and if any vegetable that contains those colorings, such as red cabbage, blue potatoes or beets, are cooked for a long time in boiling or simmering water, all of the color will be lost.

I consulted with a Russian cookbook, Please To The Table by Anyan von Bremzen and John Welchman, and all of the borscht recipes have the beets cooking in the soup no longer than fifty minutes, and almost always in the presene of a large amount of acidic ingredients. In fact, many of the recipes cook the beets separately by -roasting- them, and then they are added near the end of the cooking time, after the meats are done and many of the rest of the vegetables have gone in, -just- to add color to the soup.

The idea seems to be to bleed -just enough- color from the beets into the soup to color the soup, but to also leave color in the beets.

Acidic ingredients will help preserve anthocyanin color–which is why you will see beets and red cabbage often cooked with lemon juice, red wine or vinegar. Luckily the acids also -taste- good with these vegetables.

My solution–don’t cook borscht in a crockpot again. Or, if you do, don’t put the beets in at the beginning of the cooking process. Add them about an hour or so before the rest is done–and I would roast them ahead of time and dice them before adding them.

I hope that helps clear up your mystery.

Of course, now I am wanting borscht, thank you very much.