Posts Tagged ‘soup’

So yesterday I got back from my fun little vacation to Charleston, SC. What a gorgeous place, inside and out. Just beautiful architecture, flora, people and food. Something I kept remarking on was how good the entire city smelled.  Like flowers and breakfast breads and salty air.  We had a ton of fun visiting some truly remarkable houses and sites, walking the city, eating lots of great seafood and just relaxing.  Here’s a (very) small selection of the photos I took – mostly the food since, well, that’s always my favorite part anyway.

With payday still taunting me in the distance, I’m going to my archives until I can restock my baking supplies and bake some hopefully awesome cookies (ooh sneak peek!) in the next few days.

I made this dish a multitude of times last summer and it was always a winner with everyone who tried it, even those afraid of its Betsey Johnson day-glo colors and hard-sell of it being a cold soup.  But that’s one of the things I love most about this borscht.  It’s one of those peasant dishes with a million varieties making it adaptable to whatever you have around the house (meat, no meat) and whatever season it is, and this recipe really showcases that.  Although Ina Garten is about the furthest thing from a peasant you can get, her version is still killer and the book it comes from (Barefoot Contessa at Home) is one of my most dog-eared, smudged cookbooks I own (and that’s a good thing).

I change the recipe quite a bit here, playing with the ratio of dill and sour cream to yogurt because despite being a refreshing summer soup, it’s also incredibly rich and depending on how strong and in-season your ingredients are, the dill can be extremely overpowering, especially as it sits.  Also, if the color isn’t as vibrant when you first make it as you see in my pictures – don’t worry.  It turns that shade after you let it chill for a good 5-6 hours or even better, overnight.  And apologies for the lack of pictures but last summer I didn’t often take photos of my cooking – this was a total random happenstance since I was so enamored with the colors!