Melba's Jammin' > wrote:

> Bubba Vic, I know you treasure the rehydrating liquid from dried
> mushrooms. Is it the kind of thing to use generously or to use
> sparingly? Do I want to freeze 1/4 cup portions or, say, 1 cup
> portions? All I can think to do with it is to add it to the liquid or
> drippings for gravy making.

Very little water is needed to rehydrate dried mushrooms. Using a lot
of water makes little sense. I use the resulting liquid in the dish in
which the mushrooms are used. The mushrooms themselves will inevitably
have more intensive taste than their rehydrating liquid, no matter how
concentrated.

Recently, I cooked sauerkraut schi, the most Russian soup of them all.
Regardless, I'd guess that 99% of modern Russians have never tasted real
schi. First, I prepared sauerkraut. I put it in a pot with some minced
onions, a few slices of parsley root and a couple of pats of clarified
butter. I put the pot in the very slow oven (ca. 110°C/225°F) for about
4 hours, imitating the conditions of the Russian oven. Occasionally, I
checked if the sauerkraut was getting burned or just too dry, in which
case I added a couple of spoons of sauerkraut juice, stirring the
sauerkraut. Once the kraut was ready, I put the pot outside, to freeze
the kraut (the temperatures were below freezing until today) overnight.
This is important, as it changes the taste of sauerkraut quite a bit.
The next day, I cooked the broth with a piece of beef shank, a couple of
pieces of brisket (about 1 kg/2.2 pounds of meat total), onions, parsley
root, celery root, and carrot for about 3 hours, strained it, cut the
meat in pieces and combined it with the thawed sauerkraut, the meat cut
in pieces, a handful of rehydrated porcini together with their soaking
liquid, and continued to cook over low heat for about 40 minutes.
Served it with dill, minced garlic and sour cream. This kind of soup
can be - and in fact used to be - eaten every day, sometimes more than
once a day. I have here a September food schedule of Novospassky
Monastery from the year 1648. Schi of some kind were served at least
once, often twice, every single day.

Victor