What kind of tops are used to make tops. Botvinya is the queen of cold soups. The process of making botvinya

Classic Botvinya is a cold first course of Russian cuisine. It has been undeservedly forgotten, but previously it was often prepared in the summer heat. The stew was perfectly refreshing and filling, without overloading the digestive system. One of the variants of this type of cold soup is beetroot with fish. Usually boiled fillet of salmon or salmon is added, so the dish can be served as a kind of delicacy to guests. festive table. The cooking process is simple, but will require some labor. So get ready to record step by step recipe Botvini with fish.

Ingredients for classic botvinya

4 fresh cucumbers;

300 g red fish (fillet);

250 ml sour kvass;

150 g of young beet tops;

6 pcs. radish;

150 g sorrel;

1 onion;

1 bunch of any fresh herbs (dill, onion, parsley);

1-2 bay leaves;

0.5 tsp grated horseradish;

2-3 pinches of table salt and black pepper.

The process of making botvinya

Before you consider old recipe beet soup with fish, let us explain the difference between beet soup and botvinya. The first soup is made from boiled or pickled beet roots, the second National dish prepared from tops, i.e. young leaves of beets, radishes, turnips and other vegetables with thick rhizomes. From this it is easy to assume that the meaning of the word comes precisely from the name of the main ingredient. As with okroshka, a relative of botvinya, a lot of fresh herbs and vegetables are added to the dish. You can even add nettles, dandelion leaves, spinach and other edible spring greens.

Having roughly figured out what kind of dish it is, you can start preparing the base for the cold soup. Let’s talk right away about how to prepare the base for cold borscht. Wash a piece of red fish well. Place bay leaf, a whole peeled onion, a couple of allspice peas and salt into boiling water. Dip the seafood into this aromatic broth and cook it over medium heat until soft.

While the broth is boiling, thoroughly wash the sorrel, herbs, and tops for the tops. If the leaves are together with young rhizomes, then beets are also used for cooking. Dry all the green mass and chop finely.

Remove the fish to cool on a plate and strain the broth. Return the pan with the aromatic broth to the stove, and after boiling, add the prepared tops. After boiling the contents of the pan for several minutes, turn off the burner. Add salt, sugar, grated horseradish to the resulting base to taste, add kvass and cool completely.

Cool the beet leaf soup preparation further in the refrigerator.

For beet tops soup, all vegetables, as well as the base, should be very cold. Wash the radishes and cucumbers well and cut off the excess. Cut the vegetables into strips or thin half rings and place them on deep plates. The contents of each plate with cucumbers and radishes generously pour cooled fish broth with kvass.

By classic recipe cold soup served with ice, which is poured into a separate container.

Immediately place a boiled piece of salmon in a plate, cut into portions. Each ingredient should have a separate spoon, with which the required amount of product is placed into the plate. The dish is good to eat with rye bread.

What tops are used for tops if there are no young beets or leaves on hand. In this case, you can use regular herbs from the store (sorrel, parsley, green onions, spinach) combined with rhubarb. This ingredient will significantly enrich the vitamin composition of the dish.

For greater nutritional value, serve cold soup with homemade sour cream.

Instead of boiled fish, you can serve marinated or lightly salted fish.

While rusk and white kvass can still be found here and there in monastic shops and rare catering outlets, beet kvass has dropped out of the assortment forever. It’s not difficult to prepare - pour boiling water over a couple of rye crusts, cut the beets into slices or cubes, leave in a warm place for a couple of days and you’ll have kvass. With some degree of probability. Since the share is low, let’s go the other way, where the degree of success is higher, and at the end we get an even more elegant result. Let's show off better, so to speak.

How to make beetroot botvinya

When you buy beets with tops on the market, you immediately get three useful components, which you may not even realize. Namely - himself root vegetable, young and bright, tops stems and tops leaves. All these tops and roots are valuable to us, and this is how.

From a root vegetable we will make a likeness kvass- bright ruby ​​sour drink. The stems will serve as a textural filler - they have a great crunch. The leaves will be a thickening filler for greater density.

Beetroot, beet tops and beet kvass

In addition to beets, the composition may include sorrel And spinach , also like green fillers and " acidity regulators", as they say on the labels. Must be included fresh cucumbers And green onions , available radish And hard boiled eggs .

Botvinje is always served with salted fish - red or salmon, and served with crayfish tails. Those who " does not suffer from stomach weakness", as they used to write in cookbooks, they add to botvinye finely crushed ice.

Botvinya from Andrey Bugaisky

Classic botvinya recipe from Andrey Bugaisky

To prepare botvinya for 4 hungry adults you need to buy:

• 3 young beets with tops
• large bunch of sorrel
• large bunch of spinach
• 3 fresh cucumbers
• bunch of radishes
• bunch of green onions
• half a bunch of dill
• 3 chicken eggs
• 500 g of fresh sturgeon or at least pike perch or 300 g of lightly salted salmon or trout
• 4 live crayfish

Product layout for Botvinya from Andrey Bugaisky

The composition of the set is even somewhat redundant, but it won’t be any worse; unnecessary components can be removed from it painlessly.

We divide whole-dug beets into three components. We clean the beets themselves and cut them into thin julienne strips. Or grate it if you're feeling lazy, but we don't approve of that. Place in a bowl, sprinkle with salt, pour over white wine or apple cider vinegar, press down with pressure and let it stand for at least half an hour.

For the botvinya, pour white wine vinegar over the prepared beets.

Boil 1 liter of water, add salt, throw in the washed sorrel ( It’s better to cut off the stems), chat for about a minute and place in a colander, let drain and squeeze.

When the sorrel has cooled a little, puree it with a blender or through a sieve the old-fashioned way. Do the same with spinach, just don’t puree it, but chop it finely with a knife on a board.

For the botvinya, finely chop the spinach

Simmer sturgeon or pike perch in very salty water with vinegar, or better yet, in kurt broth or cucumber pickle. It is more convenient to take the fish on the skin; it does not fall apart during the process. The fish comes in very quickly, don’t get carried away with this activity. Let cool and cut into slices about a centimeter thick.

For botvinya, cut the poached sturgeon into pieces

Boil 3 liters of water, add 3 tablespoons of salt and dill stems, throw in live crayfish head down, let it boil again and keep on medium heat for about 10 minutes. Let the crayfish cool in the same water for at least another 10 minutes, then remove and clean the necks and claws.

For the botvinya, peel the boiled crayfish and cut them

Boil 2 liters of water, add the pickled beets along with the juice, let it boil again, reduce the heat, simmer for 3 minutes and add the beet stems cut diagonally. Let it boil again and cook again for three minutes. Add thinly sliced ​​beet leaves, let it boil again, cook for another three minutes. Add sorrel and spinach, stir. Remove from heat and let cool, the faster the better. It makes sense to place the pan in a basin with cold water or into a plugged sink. Then transfer to the refrigerator and cool as much as possible.

Cooking botvinya

Finely chop cucumbers, radishes, green onions and dill. Hard-boil and peel the eggs, cut them in half or into quarters.

For the botvinya, finely chop the vegetables and herbs

Let's start the general collection botvinyi. Place fresh vegetables and herbs on plates. Pour very cold beet broth and other stuff on top. Lay out crayfish necks and claws, hard-boiled eggs.

Assembling the boot

A slice of poached fish can be placed directly on a plate; flattened lightly salted fish is best served separately with lemon wedges.

The result is a dazzling beauty of rich and bright taste. There is no shame in serving it on any table. In my opinion, only people with a hopelessly spoiled taste and coloristic perception of the world can put sour cream in Botvina. We do not recommend doing this!

More recently, botvinya was considered the pearl of Russian cuisine. Every housewife knew how to cook it. It was by her ability to cook botvinya that the hostess’s culinary abilities were judged, which was reflected in oral folklore - the well-known saying “As Ustinya is, so is her botvinya.”

The word botvinya comes from the word tops. In the old days in Rus', sorrel, young nettles, carrot and beet leaves were used for cooking various dishes, in particular, they were used to prepare botvinya, the recipe of which was forgotten over time. Nowadays this wonderful dish appears less and less on our tables and has almost completely disappeared due to the high cost, and more due to the fact that the technology for preparing this dish is quite labor-intensive.

Botvinya was served as the first cold dish, or after the first hot one. For botvinya, all the greens were boiled, and then finely chopped with a knife and poured with kvass. If you rub the boiled leaves through a sieve or mince them through a meat grinder, you will get a puree soup, not a botvina.

The complete botvinya recipe, which will be described below, is an expensive and difficult to prepare dish consisting of three parts: botvinya, red or white boiled fish (salmon, stellate sturgeon, sturgeon) and chopped ice into small pieces, which are periodically added to the botvinya to keep it cold all the time. Therefore, a full botvinya is served to one person in three cups with two spoons - for the botvinya and for ice, and one fork, which is used to take the fish. Botvinya is only served with Rye bread.

The fish part of the botvinya consisted of several varieties of red or white fish and crayfish or crab meat, as well as shrimp. However, few could afford such expensive fish, so sometimes they prepared the so-called incomplete botvinya without fish. In some recipes, the composition of botvinya was simplified.

But such an incomplete botvinya recipe, which contains the replacement of some products with others or is prepared without fish, is devoid of attractiveness, since the true taste of the dish is distorted and it turns into an ordinary cold summer soup, such as, for example, beet soup The recipe is cold. Botvinya can be simple or steamed. Both types of botvinya are prepared on the basis of kvass, which should be neither sour nor sweet. To add spiciness to the botvinya, lemon juice and grated horseradish are added to the kvass.

For a simple full botvinya you need a liter of bread kvass, a glass of white okroshka kvass, two glasses of boiled sorrel, a glass of boiled nettle, three young beets with tops, fresh cucumber, two large spoons of grated horseradish, half a lemon, a teaspoon of mustard, half a glass of green onions , one teaspoon each of salt and sugar, one and a half tablespoons of dill, half a kilogram of fish and four crayfish.

First you need to prepare the green mass and add finely chopped green onions to it, previously grated with dill and salt, and also finely chopped beets. Cut the zest from the lemon, grind it in a cup with sugar, add horseradish, mustard and lemon juice, mix everything and pour into kvass obtained by combining both types of kvass. Now the kvass base obtained in this way needs to be combined with the botanical mass, add the cucumber, cutting it into small cubes, and put everything in the cold for 20 minutes so that the sour base is well absorbed into the tops.

While the botvinya is brewing, let’s prepare the fish part. For this, small (50 grams) pieces different fish valuable varieties should be boiled for 10 minutes in boiling salted water with spices.

The recipe for steamed botvinya differs from simple botvinya by the presence of steamed sourdough in it, made from leaven grounds and flour. The steaming is done in advance, a day before preparing the botvinya. To prepare it, rye flour is diluted with water in a small clay pot and place in a preheated oven for 30 minutes.

The well-seasoned mixture is filtered through a sieve and finely chopped boiled mixture is added, the whole thing is placed in an enamel bowl and filled with kvass grounds and left to sour for a day. Then the brew is diluted with kvass and other components are added.

From the name it seems that this is a simple dish, but there are so many subtleties! Some housewives probably cannot even imagine that recipes with beets can be so complex and time-consuming. Apparently the complexity of preparation was the main reason why it is so tasty and healthy dish, as botvinya was undeservedly forgotten.

Botvinya - one of the oldest dishes of Russian cuisine. For many centuries it has been a delight for gourmets, earning the title of the queen of Russian cold soups. Unfortunately, now botvinya has faded into the background due to the length of cooking and the non-standard set of products, giving way to a democratic and uncomplicated okroshka. Many references to botvinya have been preserved in the literature.

IN “Culinary Dictionary” V.V. Pokhlebkin gives the following description of botvinya:

“A cold soup dish made with kvass from boiled beet tops, nettles and quinoa, green onions, cucumbers and lightly boiled red fish, both fresh and salted-smoked. In addition, borage and dill were added to the botvinya.”

Please note that classic botvinya does not include beets among the ingredients. They began to add it much later, blurring the line between botvinya and beetroot. By the way, according to nutritionists, beet tops contain much more vitamins and useful substances than in the root vegetable itself.

The basis of botvinya is kvass. It appeared back in the 9th century and for centuries was not just an everyday drink, but also basic basis for many dishes - cold stews, appetizers, sweet and flour dishes. Vegetables and meat were stewed together with kvass, and for the common people kvass with black bread and green onions was the main food in the summer heat. They even steamed and doused themselves with kvass for health.
The mix of vegetables and kvass gives the botvinya its characteristic color. In I.A. Goncharov's “Frigate “Pallada” you can find the following comparison - the sea “ brownish-greenish, like botvinya”.
. Mentions of her can be found in the works S.T. Aksakova, I.A. Goncharova, A.F. Pisemsky, D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak, Gilyarovsky , but probably the most “delicious” description belongs to I.S. Shmelev:
G old orca, come eat botvinya with us! Well, well, you didn’t have much lunch, and botvinya with whitefish is not every day... don’t stand on ceremony!<…>
And the table is cheerful. My father always makes the botvinya himself.
Around a white earthenware bowl with blue rims there are plates, and on them everything is cheerful: a green mound of finely chopped onions, a dark green mound of fragrant dill, a golden mound of crushed orange zest, a white mound of shaved horseradish, a brown-green mound with toppings, a stack of thin circles, with grains - fresh cucumbers, a bowl of crystal ice, a block of beluga, in grains, sticking out like a hump in stains, flaps of tender whitefish, juicy and pinkish-pale, a film of golden balychka with a reddish edge. All this smells in its own way, viscous, fresh and pungent, fills the whole room and merges into that wonderful thing called botvinya. The father, having rolled up his strong cuffs in large gold cufflinks, cheerfully stirs everything in a bowl, drinks kvass from a decanter, and foam hisses with bubbles. It's hot: botvinya is just right now.
Everyone eats cheerfully, crunches on cucumbers, cartilage - hrukhru”.
I. Shmelev, “Politics”

Emperor Alexander I held botvinya in special honor. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814, the tsar gave lunches and dinners for 350 or more people with “ gastronomic rarities", among which was Botvinya. There is a historical anecdote associated with it, published in the magazine “Russian Archive” :

G Sir Alexander Pavlovich was very disposed towards the English ambassador. Once, while talking to him about Russian cuisine, he asked if he had any idea about botvinya, which the Tsar himself loved very much. Having learned that the ambassador had never tried this dish, the Emperor promised to send it to him. The ambassador lived on Palace Embankment, not far from the palace. The Emperor, eating botvinya, remembered his promise, which he immediately fulfilled. The messenger mistook this dish for soup and ordered it to be heated.
During the meeting, the Emperor did not forget to ask how he liked the botvinya. The diplomat hesitated somewhat and finally explained that, of course, reheated food can no longer be as good as freshly prepared food.”. (Magazine "Russian Archive")
For foreigners, Botvinya was something exotic and extreme, like a Russian bathhouse. Unusual flavor combination in addition to the ice component, it puzzled them, and few dared to try it.
At the Trinity tavern, the baron was placed by his friend in an almost life-threatening situation: first of all, he was asked for botvina with ice; the baron was terribly thirsty for this dish and was afraid; however, he began to eat it and felt bliss and fear with each bite; Then the prince wanted to serve him two-day-old cabbage soup, but the baron tried it and absolutely could not eat it.” A.F. Pisemsky, “In the whirlpool”»
But among the foreigners who tried botvinya there were also connoisseurs. These include the French writer and gourmet Alexandr Duma. They say that it was the creator of “The Three Musketeers” and “The Great Culinary Dictionary” who named botvinya the queen of Russian cold soups.

On the Russian table, botvinya was an integral part of a gala dinner.

“Everything was prepared with such skill and with such deep knowledge of the human stomach that there was hardly anything left to be desired. The action opened with an unusually sophisticated botvinya.”

(Mamin-Sibiryak,” Privalov’s Millions”)
Each housewife had her own recipe for this dish, and the secret ingredients of the festive botvinya were passed down from generation to generation. The ability to cook botvinya was an indicator of the culinary abilities of the housewife. It was considered a shame if the housewife cooked it poorly. There was even a saying: “ Like Aksinya, so is Botvinya«.
A complete botvinya consists of three parts and is served in three plates:
actually the botvinya itself;
boiled fish;
crushed ice
The fish part in botvinya ideally consists of different types red fish (boiled and salted), supplemented with crayfish meat (crabs, shrimp). Best option the basis for botvinya is ordinary drinking kvass mixed with white okroshka in a 1:1 ratio (the proportions can be changed to taste).
You can make okroshechny kvass yourself. Its composition is very simple - rye bread, water, sugar and yeast.
Okroshechny white kvass

Ingredients:
500 g rye bread
3.5 liters of boiling water
0.5 cups granulated sugar
15 g yeast (or 5 g dry)

First of all, prepare rye crackers - cut the bread into small pieces and dry in the oven. Put them in three liter jar, pour 2 liters of boiling water and leave for 2 hours covered in a warm place. Strain the resulting bread infusion and pour into a separate bowl, and pour the remaining bread mass again with 1.5 liters of boiling water and leave in a warm place for 2 hours. Strain the second infusion and mix with the first. Add sugar, the amount can be varied according to your own taste. Stir thoroughly until the sugar is completely dissolved and add the diluted yeast. Leave the infusion in a warm place to ferment for 12 hours. Strain the finished kvass and bottle it, you can add mint leaves, crushed cranberries, lemon zest, 2-3 raisins, seal tightly and put in the refrigerator for a day.
Do not throw away the remaining grounds - they will serve as a starter for new portions of kvass. There is no need to add yeast, just water and sugar.

There are many recipes for botvinya. For example, this one from Elena Molokhovets(with champagne)
Botvinya .

One and a half pounds of sorrel, cleaned, washed, boiled own juice, rub through a sieve; put 6 pcs., i.e. 1 pound of fresh cucumbers, peeled and cut into square pieces, a handful of finely chopped green onions, mashed with a full spoon of salt, a full spoon of sugar, ½ spoon of prepared mustard or a spoon of grated horseradish. Add dill; dilute all 2 bottles. Bavarian kvass, you can add an incomplete bottle. sour cabbage soup. Serve separately, in salted water with onions, a bunch of herbs, and laurel. leaf and pepper boiled salmon, salmon, white fish, whitefish or crayfish necks and separately finely chopped ice. You can add sherry or champagne". (Elena Molokhovets, “Gift for Young Housewives”)

Botvinya simple complete from V.V. Pokhlebkin
1 liter of bread kvass, 0.25 liters of white kvass, 1 glass of nettle, 1 glass of sorrel, 3 young beets with tops, 1 - 1.5 fresh cucumber, 1 - 2 tbsp. tablespoons grated horseradish, 0.5 lemon, 1 teaspoon mustard, 0.5 - 0.75 cups green onions, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1.5 tbsp. spoons of dill, 0.4 kg of fish, 4 crayfish (or 1 jar of krill), 0.5 cups of beet broth.

Preparation of botanical mass . Lightly simmer the tops of young beets and the roots separately until soft. In the same way, lightly boil (no more than 3 minutes) whole sorrel leaves. Rinse the nettles thoroughly in cold water, then scald with boiling water and drain in a colander. Chop all the greens finely with a sharp knife and measure according to the recipe. Do not rub or pass through a meat grinder under any circumstances, otherwise the botvinya will turn into a puree soup and its taste will change. Then add finely chopped beet roots to the green mass, as well as finely chopped green onions, grated with salt and dill.

Preparing the kvass base and combining it with the botanical mass. Combine both types of kvass. Cut the zest from the lemon, grind it with sugar in a cup, add lemon juice, mustard, horseradish, a little kvass, beet broth, mix and pour into the bulk of the kvass. Combine the kvass base with the botanical mass, add cucumber cut into small cubes and let stand in the cold for 15 - 20 minutes - the mixture should brew, and the sour base should be absorbed into the tops. Meanwhile, prepare the fish part of the botvinya.
Preparing fish for botvinya. Boil a set of pieces (50g each) of red fish of different types (sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, salmon) in a small amount of boiling salted water with onion, dill, black pepper and bay leaf: freshly salted and salted-smoked fish - for 2 - 3 minutes, raw - 10 min. The use of uncooked salted, and even more so salted-smoked fish is excluded, since it does not combine with the sour base and spoils the taste of this expensive and difficult to prepare dish.
Botvinya eating order .

Pork is served either as a first course, or after a hot first course as a liquid appetizer before a roast. Two spoons and a fork are served with it: they take the fish with a fork, sip the botvina with the first spoon, and periodically put pieces of ice into the botvina from a cup with ice so that it remains cold all the time. Only fresh rye bread goes with botvinya.( V.V. Pokhlebkin, “ National cuisines our peoples")

A fairly simple recipe for botvinya is given by P. Weil and A. Genis in the famous "Russian cuisine in exile" :

Lightly simmer beet tops and sorrel until soft, chop finely along with cucumber, green onions and dill, pour in kvass and add horseradish, mustard and lemon juice. Boil the pieces of salted and smoked fish- sturgeon, salmon, halibut. Combine with the base and let sit in the cold for at least an hour.

Botvinya restaurant .

Shch and spinach are sorted out, washed, poached separately and rubbed or ground in a meat grinder. The resulting puree is diluted with kvass, chopped and scalded lemon zest is added. This liquid part of the botvinya is cooled and poured into plates or soup bowls. A side dish is served separately on a plate or dish: chopped green onions, fresh cucumbers, cut into strips, chopped green salad, grated horseradish, slices of boiled and smoked fish. In the old days, botvinya was prepared with sturgeon fish.

For the liquid part: bread kvass 700, spinach, sorrel 100-120 each, lemon 1/10, sugar.
For garnish: green onions 50, fresh cucumbers 200, salad 50, horseradish 50.
For serving: boiled fish 100.
N.I. Kovalev “Russian cuisine”

". This proverb preserves the memory of an undeservedly forgotten dish. The ability to cook green cabbage soup and botvinya was an indicator of the culinary abilities of the housewife. In April 1834, A. S. Pushkin writes to his wife from St. Petersburg to Moscow: “...they are serving glorious botvinya: Lev Sergeevich slurps two plates...” Melnikov-Pechersky, Gilyarovsky, and other Russian writers commemorated the botvinya with kind words.

Botvinya simple, complete.

• 1 liter of bread kvass
• 0.25 l white okroshka kvass
• 1.5-2 cups boiled sorrel
• 1 cup boiled nettle
• 3 young beets with tops
• 1-1.5 fresh cucumber
• 1-2 tbsp. spoons of grated horseradish
• 0.5 lemon, 1 teaspoon mustard
• 0.5-0.75 cups green onions
• 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1.5 tbsp. spoons of dill
• 0.5 kg fish
• 4 crayfish

Preparation of botanical mass. Lightly simmer the tops of young beets and the roots separately until soft. In the same way, lightly boil (no more than 3 minutes) whole sorrel leaves. Rinse the nettles thoroughly in cold water, then scald with boiling water and drain in a colander. Measure all the greens according to the recipe and cut finely with a sharp knife. Do not rub or pass through a meat grinder under any circumstances, otherwise the botvinya will turn into a puree soup and its taste will change. Then add finely chopped beet roots to the green mass, as well as finely chopped green onions, grated with salt and dill.

Preparing the kvass base and combining it with the botanical mass. Combine both types of kvass. Cut the zest from the lemon, grind it with sugar in a cup, add lemon juice, mustard, horseradish, a little kvass, mix and pour into the bulk of the kvass.

Combine the kvass base with the botanical mass, add cucumber cut into small cubes and let stand in the cold for 15-20 minutes - the mixture should brew, and the sour base should be absorbed into the tops. Meanwhile, prepare the fish part of the botvinya.

Preparing fish for botvinya. Boil a set of pieces (50 g each) of red fish of different types (sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, salmon) in a small amount of boiling salted water with onion, dill, black pepper and bay leaf: freshly salted and salted-smoked fish - for 2-3 minutes, raw - 10 min. The use of uncooked salted, and even more so salted-smoked fish is excluded, since it does not combine with the sour base and spoils the taste of this expensive and difficult to prepare dish.

The order of eating botvinya. Botvinya is served either as a first course, or after a hot first course as a liquid appetizer before a roast. Two spoons and a fork are served with it: they take the fish with a fork, sip the botvina with the first spoon, and periodically put pieces of ice into the botvina from a cup with ice so that it remains cold all the time. Only fresh rye bread goes with botvinya.

Botvinya- a cold soup dish made with kvass from boiled beet tops, nettles and quinoa, green onions, cucumbers and lightly boiled red fish, both fresh and salted-smoked. In addition, botvinya was added borage(borago) and . Culinary Dictionary V.V. Pokhlebkina, 2002.

In Western European countries borage(borago) is cultivated as a vegetable plant. Young leaves smell fresh cucumber, their taste is refreshing, reminiscent of cucumbers with a hint of onion. The leaves are used for food fresh, flowers - fresh and candied. They are good substitutes for cucumbers; they are added to vinaigrettes, salads, sauces (mustard, tomato, sour cream), side dishes, okroshka, cold vegetable soups and borscht. The roots, collected in the fall, are used to make green oil, added to cheeses, cottage cheese, sour cream, to flavor tinctures, wines, punch, vinegar, syrups, beer, essences and cold drinks. Borage adds a piquant taste to minced meat, minced meat and fish fried on vegetable oil. Borage flowers, fresh and dried, are used in the liquor and confectionery industries.

Botvinya steamed.
2-3 tbsp. spoons of rye flour, 1-1.5 cups cold water, 0.5-1 glass of kvass grounds, 5 young beets with tops, 1-1.25 liters of bread kvass, the rest of the products are the same as for simple tops.

To the cooking method described above, one process is added - preparing the steaming. This is done a day before preparing the botvinya itself.

Preparing the steaming. Rye flour dilute with water, pour into a small clay pot and, closing, place in a preheated oven for about 20-30 minutes. When the mixture has hardened well, strain it through a sieve into an enamel bowl, add boiled and finely chopped beet tops, pour the kvass grounds over everything and leave to sour for a day, then dilute with kvass and combine with other ingredients.
Great encyclopedia culinary arts. All recipes by V.V. Pokhlebkina

Botvinya- a dish of Russian cuisine, which is made with sour kvass, which is boiled with boiled and grated sorrel, beet tops, spinach, green onions, nettles and other edible herbs (in Old Russian “tops”). Boiled, fresh or salted red fish (i.e. sturgeon fish) is served with botvinya, and is eaten with pieces of ice constantly placed on the plate. Botvinya may be incomplete, i.e. no fish. Botvinya could also be served with bagrenets, crushed ice, which was added to the dish. Botvinya good in the summer heat, it has a lighter taste than okroshka and has a great refreshing effect.

Botvinya.
Kvass (white and bread), young beets, nettles, sorrel, beet tops, green onions, dill, parsley, horseradish. red fish, crayfish.
Boil the chopped fish for 6-7 minutes in water with pre-baked carrots and onions and spices. Chop the sorrel and tops. Cook in the resulting broth for about 2 minutes, grind in a blender. Chop cucumbers, onions, dill. Grate the radish on a fine grater. Mix all ingredients, add horseradish, sugar, salt. Mix. Pour kvass over the grated greens and chopped vegetables. Serve the fish and crushed ice separately on a plate.

According to Dahl, “a cold, usually fish dish made with kvass with boiled herbs (sorrel, etc.), beet tops and finely chopped vegetables (cucumber and onion).” The name comes from the Old Russian “botet”, which means to get fat. Although this is probably due to the fact that tops and leaves of plants with thick roots (beets, turnips, radishes, etc.) were used to prepare the dish. A mandatory ingredient is boiled fish. One of the most beloved folk dishes in Rus'. Culinary dictionary. Zdanovich L.I. 2001.

Botvinya.
A complete boot consists of three parts:
1) botvinya soup itself, 2) boiled red fish (sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, salmon), served separately from the soup, 3) finely chopped ice, also served on a separate plate or cup. Thus, botvinya is served in three dishes to one person at once. However, botvinya can be prepared without expensive fish. Then it will be the so-called incomplete botvinya, simply cold summer green soup.

Based on the nature of the soup part, botvins are divided into simple and steamed. Both types are prepared on a leaven basis. At the same time, steamed botvinya differs from simple botvinya in that, in addition to kvass, it contains sour steamed sourdough made from flour and kvass grounds. The choice and preparation of the kvass base is even more important here than in prisons and okroshkas. The acidity of kvass should pleasantly complement the fresh or salty taste of the fish, and not contradict it. Therefore, kvass should not be either sweet or overly sour. More precisely, the acid should be subtly-gently-spicy. It is achieved in botvinya not only with the help of kvass itself, but also thanks to the gentle plant acid of herbs such as sorrel, and in steamed botvinya - with the help rye sourdough. In addition, grated horseradish and lemon juice are added to kvass for spiciness and aroma. The base for botvinya can be dark kvass bread kvass, mixed with less than a third of white okroshka.

As for the fish part of the botvinya, it is better if it consists of different types of red fish and a small amount of crayfish meat or (as a replacement) crabs and shrimp.

Botvinya.
Bunch of young beet tops
1 raw beets
Wash the tops, finely chop them and place them in a hot vegetable bowl. Cook until done. Raw beets grate and squeeze the juice into a pan with tops to give it a beautiful color. Served with botvinya boiled potatoes with cracklings.

Botvinya field, with fish and crayfish

• Lightly salted salmon – 500 g
• Boiled crayfish necks – 20 pcs.
• Green onions - a large bunch
• Horseradish, grated to taste
• Ice crushed to taste
• Lemon to taste, salt to taste
• Sour bread kvass – 3 l
• Sugar – 1 tsp.
• Small cucumbers – 5 pcs.
• Sorrel leaves and beet tops - 2 full handfuls

Boil water in a large saucepan, add salt. Tie the sorrel and beet tops into separate bunches and lower them one by one for 20–30 seconds. into boiling water. Tear off the scalded leaves and chop. Finely chop the cucumbers and add to the greens along with kvass. Chop the green onions, lightly salt and after 5-6 minutes. add to botvinya along with sugar.

Thinly slice the fish, place on plates along with the crayfish tails, and pour over the botvina. Add crushed ice and grated horseradish to taste. Serve with a slice of lemon.

Botvinya with pink salmon

• Onions, dill, black peppercorns and for boiling pink salmon
• Light (sour) kvass – 600 ml
• Medium cucumbers – 4 pcs.
• Medium bunch of sorrel
• Dark bread kvass – 400 ml
• Beet tops leaves – 15-20 pcs.
• Large handful of nettle leaves
• Salt, sugar, sour cream for serving
• Large bunch of spinach, grated horseradish - 1 tbsp. l., lemon zest - 1 tbsp. l.
• Pink salmon fillet or river trout– 500 g

Prepare the fish for botvinya in advance by boiling it in a small amount of boiling salted water with onion, dill, black pepper and bay leaf. Then cool completely in the broth and cut into small pieces. Chop all the greens and put them in boiling water for 2-3 minutes. (you can use fish decoction), place in a sieve and let the water drain.

Peel the cucumbers, remove the seeds, cut the pulp into small cubes. Mix dark and light kvass, add horseradish and lemon zest, add all the greens and cucumbers, salt and add sugar to taste. Cool for 2–4 hours. When serving, add pieces of fish and sour cream to each plate with botvina.

Botvinya is always prepared with fish. And the fish should not be the first one you come across, but only the best - lightly salted or boiled. If there are live crayfish, you need to boil them and add the peeled crayfish necks to the botvinya. There should be no decoction of tops in Russian okroshka. The tops are used only in the form of puree, and the liquid part of the dish consists of kvass and sour cabbage soup. Selecting a leaven base for botvinya is a responsible matter. Kvass or sour cabbage soup should be moderately sour and thick.

Botvinya with fish

• Horseradish – 1 tbsp. l.
• Bay leaf – 1 pc.
• For the broth:
• 500 g each sorrel and beet tops
• carrots – 1 pc.
• 100 g green onions
• 2 large radishes
  For the botvinya:
• cucumber
• 500 g salmon or pink salmon fillet
• onion – 1 onion
• 50 g dill
• 3 black peppercorns
• 1 liter of kvass
• sugar – 1 tsp.

Boiled fish It is difficult to cut into neat pieces of the same size. Therefore, we recommend cutting into portioned pieces raw fillet.

Place the onions and carrots in a saucepan, pour in 1 liter of water, place over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, add fish pieces, bay leaf, salt and black pepper. Cook for 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the fish to a deep dish. Cover with a clean towel and set aside. Strain the broth.

Sort out the sorrel and tops, rinse thoroughly and cut into thin strips. Pour 2 ladles of broth into a saucepan, put on fire and bring to a boil. Add greens and cook for 2 minutes.

Drain the greens in a colander and shake vigorously several times. Then grind in a blender or rub through a sieve.

Wash the cucumbers and cut into strips. Wash the onion and dill, dry and chop. Wash the radishes and grate them on a fine grater. Mix chopped vegetables and herbs, add horseradish, sugar and salt. Mix again.

Wrap the ice in a linen towel and crush it with a hammer. Transfer to a bowl. Place the pureed herbs and vegetables on plates. Pour in kvass. Serve fish and ice separately.

Botvinya

• White kvass or sour cabbage soup – 1.5 l
• Sorrel, spinach, nettle, nettle, beet tops – 400-500 g
• Boiled or salted trout, salmon, sturgeon, whitefish, salmon – 500-600 g
• Small cucumbers – 2-3 pcs.
• Green onions – 1 small bunch
• Dill – 1 small bunch
• Salt - to taste, crushed ice

Rinse all leafy greens (sorrel, spinach, beet tops, nettles, nettles) thoroughly, place in a saucepan, adding cold water flush with the leaves. Bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes, lightly pressing the greens from time to time. Place the boiled leaves in a sieve, wipe and cool.

Peel the cucumbers and finely chop them along with the onion and dill. Lightly salt and mash with a wooden masher.

Dilute the mashed tops with cold kvass or sour cabbage soup, add mashed cucumbers with herbs. Place ice in the botvina and serve with thinly sliced ​​fish on a plate. Don't forget to put a saucer of ice on the table - each diner will add it to his plate independently.

Botvinya homemade (for 2 servings).

• 700 g bread kvass
• 200 g spinach and young nettles
• 100 g sorrel
• Quarter lemon (optional)
• 10 g sugar
  Garnish:
• 50 g green onions
• 50-60 g salad
• 200 g fresh cucumbers
• 50 g grated horseradish (optional)
• Dill, fish (cod, hake or some other).

Separately, sort and wash the spinach, add a little water and simmer separately. Botvinya can be prepared from one sorrel, but then its quantity needs to be increased to 150 g. Wipe the poached greens or mince them, cool, dilute with kvass, add salt, sugar, lemon zest and store in the refrigerator. Serve boiled fish, finely chopped cucumbers, chopped green onions, dill, grated horseradish, and lettuce leaves separately. You can also put them in botvinya (like in okroshka).

Botvinya meat (for 2 servings).

• 150 g sorrel
• 700 g water
• The rest of the products are the same as for okroshka

Sort the sorrel, rinse, pass raw through a meat grinder, dilute with water, boil, cool, season to taste with salt and sugar. Add here a set of products usually used for okroshka: cucumbers, boiled eggs, boiled meat, dill, chopped green onions.

For the Belarusian kholodnik or Ukrainian beetroot soup, carrots and beets are peeled, cut into cubes, and simmered in a saucepan or pan with a thick bottom (it is advisable to add beets at the end to preserve their bright color). Then put it in a saucepan with water (with salt and sugar to taste), bring to a boil and cool. And then add chopped cucumbers, boiled eggs, onions, chopped greens and crushed herbs (optional) to the soup. These soups should be served with sour cream. You can add potatoes to already prepared soup, fried mushrooms, boiled meat.

Bon appetit!