Borscht

Borscht, originally uploaded by Kelly Sue.

Borscht is an ugly word. Yet the dish itself is one of the most gorgeous things. The beet base gives borscht a deep magenta color, shifted slightly red by the diced tomatoes. And a finishing touch of olive oil makes the surface shimmer with tiny orange beads. On the first day, the soup is thin and the broth is transparent, sour-salty-sweet. The flavors develop further over the next few days - the broth gets thicker - in Russian, we say it becomes 'navaristyi' which captures it perfectly and untranslatably - and the potatoes and the beans turn a beautiful, light pink. Be careful not to boil when reheating, as the borscht will lose its magenta color and start to turn a rusty, earthy orange.

It's my last week of work at Danzantes, and my turn to cook the staff meal. Tere usually cooks the staff meal. She's 33, and used to party hard, until she burnt out. Luckily she discovered cooking - learned it from a Spanish woman who used to own a restaurant in Oaxaca - and now works as an in-home chef for the owner of the restaurant. While the owner is off traveling in India, and because the restaurant is short staffed, she steps in a few days a week to help out and cook the staff meal. She has prepared amazing soups and stews. Her fragrant sopa vegetariana was one of the most satisfying meals I've had. The secret ingredient? Yep, bacon. She has deep-fried taquitos stuffed with tomatoey shredded chicken and taught me to make the tastiest runny guacamole (I could drink the stuff) while making it all look incredibly easy. During the Grito (the independence day holiday last week. No, not cinco de mayo, people...), Tere cooked the traditional pozole - a spicy soup made with shredder turkey, and bursting grains of corn (this isn't the hominy crap you can buy in a box at whole foods), served topped with radish, lettuce and white onion.

One can appropriately show appreciation for food by callin it 'rico' or 'tan rico' or 'muy rico' or 'que rico'. Rico translates as rich, but also good or great. Tere's staff meals are always rico.

So I was both excited and really intimidated by having to follow her act. I wrote a list for the runner, using Google Translator to figure out all the "como se dice"-s and tripling all of the amounts. The ingredients arrived throughout the morning. First showed up the beets - each the size of my head. Next, the head of cabbage the size of a beach ball. With 20 minutes left before the comida, I discovered that the canned white beans that I requested were actually 'refritos' - but the Olla Express (pressure cooker) came to the rescue!

Slinking around Carlos - a juggernaut of a man, who crowds kitchen with his massive frame - trying to dodge him while he spilled oil on the floor, overflowed the steam table, sliced open his hand all the while belting banda music, I bounced back and forth between the cold table where I was frantically trying to chop up jicama and oja santa for prep and the giant cauldron of borscht on the burner at the opposite side of the room. I've often wondered about my kitchen companions. Carlos has been in the kitchen now for 4 months; Octavio for only a month. Carlos used to make sushi rolls at the Mexican chain SushItto (which I haven't dared to try). Before Danzantes, Octavio fixed cars and had never stepped foot inside the kitchen. Now, they are both firing orders with preternatural ease. I, on the other hand, am all nerves - no quiero desmadrar nada. Thanks for Harold McGree and Herve Thies, I'm overthinking everything I do. Is the temperature on the deep-fryer too hot? Have I overbeaten the egg-whites past the stiff peaks stage, and therefore stressed the proteins too much? In addition to sight and taste, I cook by sound and by smell. At home, I listen to sizzling onions to see if the temperature of my pan is correct. I'm able to smell the progress of a piece of meat in the oven. In a professional kitchen, with the stereo blaring, Eloy making a racket at the sink, and five other things cooking on the burner next to me, I'm unable to discern the smell or the sound. So I'm left with sight, which is really disorienting.

As I raced to finish, I kept trying to convince myself that the soup had international appeal. After all, my friends from Sweden and Singapore and France, and my friends who are Korean-American and the whitest white from Idaho have all loved boscht.

I put 6 bowls for the staff on the pass but no one was coming to get them. Lots of Mexicans I met like their food tibio. Not hot. Not cold. Tepid. When my food is tepid, I send it back. Here, when ordering, you can respond by saying, "dos tres" when asked whether you want your champurrado or your atole de leche caliente o frio. Most of the time your soup comes served dos tres. Finally - when the soup was dos y media - Alina came to fetch the bowls. She wrinkled her nose inquisitively and told me that she's only ever had beets as dessert food - in a salad with pineapple and yogurt, or candied.

Eventually, I felt relieved when the bowls came back empty, and some even asked for seconds and thirds. Since no one could actually remember the word 'borscht', it quickly became knows as Russian energy soup, for its uplifting effect. The borscht became fully adopted and Mexicanized when someone finally busted out the tortillas.

Then the soup was deemed 'rico' and I could finally relax.