Chinese Borscht (罗宋汤)

The first time I had "Western" food in China was when I was very little. They served me this tomato-y soup, fried pork cutlet (which resemble Japanese katsu, come to think of it), and fries. Although everything in that meal tasted awesome like nothing else to my young unspoiled tongue, I've been chasing down a perfect version of that soup I've had in my childhood to no avail. Although many places "Western" food places in China serves some version of this soup, they're all subtly different. Thinking that it's "Western", I continued my search in America when I first came over (which I thought the closest incarnation was Minestrone), and in truth, my quest didn't stop until recently when I finally googled the recipe about a week ago using the only thing I know about it, it's name: 罗宋汤. It is, apparently, a bastardized version of the Russian soup, borscht. At that point I was not all together surprised. I've heard about borscht about a year ago, a traditionally beef-flavored beet soup with a characteristic red color. I didn't put the two and two together until recently though,
when I looked up the wikipedia article for borscht and the image of the beet red soup reminded me of the tomato red of my favored soup. I suspected, but I wasn't sure. I then googled 罗宋汤, lo and behold, my suspicions were confirmed. It seems the only truly Western creation in my first Western meal was the fries.

Apparently an early incarnation of the soup appeared in Shanghai around the time of the Russian revolution (My history isn't very good), when immigrants from Russian went to China to escape. Russian restaurants there served a borscht, which the Chinese called the "Russian soup". The Chinese name for this soup: 罗宋汤, is a transliteration of "Russian", pronounced "lou-song". I don't know why the traditional beets were replaced with tomatoes, but I'm guessing it has something to do with the availability and similar red colorings.

Mystery solved! I set to recreate this soup with my own spins:

Here are the basic ingredients. Yes, we care going to use a whole head of cabbage. It's the most important ingredient in this soup, next to the tomato flavors.

Roughly chop the cabbage into large pieces, but small enough to eat in one bites when cooked down.

Roughly dice the tomatoes, slice the carrots, and cut the potato into quarter slices (half it and half it again, then slice).

Give the onion a rough chop as well, and mince up the garlic. Mince, not chop or grate. Yes, I know it's annoying but it's worth it.

Use one can of mushrooms, sliced button and stems & pieces are both ok. Rinse out the mushrooms, drain, and then roughly chop up the shrooms into smaller bits. This is why using the cheap stem & pieces canned mushrooms is fine. You're going to need small pieces anyway. I'm sure fresh mushrooms are fine too, but fresh mushrooms goes bad quickly so I don't usually have those on hand.

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil and 1 tablespoons butter in your largest pot and sauté the onions until it's starting to turn translucent and caramelized.

Throw the mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes in. Note now small the mushroom bits are. Sauté well until it's getting a little mushy.

Now take all that sautéd veggies out and put it on a plate. In the now empty pot, heat some more olive oil.

Sauté the cabbage to soften them up. If you don't sauté the cabbage and directly add it to the soup, it'll have this raw cabbage taste. You'll know what I mean if you try eating a piece of raw cabbage. You can also sauté the cabbage first and set it aside to cook the other ones, as long as you cook both. Also try using a non-stick pot. My largest pot just so happens to be the enamel one...

Now that cabbage is kind of cooked, dump in 32oz of beef broth. Normally, you make your own broth by simmering beef and beef bones, but who has that kind of time and energy? Where do you even get a beef bone?

Throw everything back in, fill with water and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to simmer for about 5 minutes.

In the mean time, open one can of tomato paste and one can of tomato sauce.

In goes the tomato paste. Break it up by stirring and let it dissolve a little. The soup should get redder and tomato-y, but it doesn't smell quite there yet.

Dump in the tomato sauce! Now it looks more like it! Nice reddish-orange with a tangy sour tomato smell. Your work is done here. Cover it and simmer for 30-45minutes. Stir occationally.

Serve hot, with some bread if you wish. Sprinkle some Parmesan, parsley, have fun with it. I was starving by the time I finished this. I need to stop with the late-night cooking.

One large batch like that will last you several days. I stop cooking for 2 days after that and I've got two hungry students here. The next day I had it with some toasted bread with salami. mmmmmm


Chinese Borscht  (罗宋汤):

• 1 head cabbage, chopped
• 3 tomatoes, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 potato, quarter-sliced
• 2 onions, chopped
• 4-5 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 large can mushrooms, roughly chopped
• 1 can tomato paste
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 32oz beef broth (or vegetable broth to make it completely vegetarian)
• salt and pepper to taste