The Slavic east and the Balkans · Volume 26, Rye, the Samovar and the Sturgeon’s Retreat
Grey shchi (серые щи)
Vologda region
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Made not from ordinary cabbage but from крошево, the coarse, dark green-grey outer leaves normally discarded at harvest, lacto-fermented over several days before it ever reaches the pot.
As tradition built it
For a 3-litre pot.
Ingredients
An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.
For the крошево ferment
- coarse, dark green-grey outer cabbage leaves (normally discarded at harvest)
- grated carrot
- rye flour
- about 3% of the cabbage's weight salt
- warm water
For the shchi
- 700 g fermented grey cabbage leaves (крошево)
- 800 g to 1 kg bone-in beef, chuck or brisket
- 5 to 6 dried porcini
- 1 carrot
- 2 medium potatoes
- 2 onions
- to taste celery root, parsley root, bay, black peppercorns
- to taste to finish: dill, smetana, double cream and garlic
Method
Ferment the крошево
- Wash, chop fine, blanch, press and salt the coarse outer cabbage leaves.
- Mix with grated carrot, layer with rye flour and leave under weight, covered in warm water, for five days with several stirrings to lacto-ferment.
Make the shchi
- Simmer the beef with the onions, aromatics, celery root, parsley root, bay and black peppercorns, for several hours to make a stock.
- Separately, braise the fermented cabbage in a clay pot with butter and a little hot water in a gentle oven, 60 to 80°C, for just over an hour.
- Strain the stock and combine the braised cabbage into it.
- Cook the potato and dried porcini separately; mash the potato into the broth as a thickener.
- Add the chopped mushrooms with their liquor 15 to 20 minutes before the end.
- Rest the finished pot in a warm oven at least 30 minutes before serving, with smetana, cream, dill and minced garlic stirred through.
What a modern chef changes
A temperature-controlled ferment, a falling-heat braise and a clarified stock
Rungs 1, 2 and 3.
Method
- Ferment the крошево under proper temperature control, 22 to 24°C, rather than in an unregulated pantry corner, for a more reliable, cleanly sour result. Rung 2.
- Braise the fermented cabbage under томление logic: an oven genuinely allowed to drift down from a higher starting point rather than held dead level at 60 to 80°C, for a rounder, less flatly stewed flavour. Rung 1.
- Clarify the beef stock properly with an egg-white raft before combining it with the cabbage.
- Finish with home-cultured smetana rather than a supermarket tub, since this is a dish whose whole character rests on real cultured dairy against real ferment. Rung 3.