Victor Sack wrote:
> 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

Very nice recipe, and I am (of course) most envious about that
food schedule. Neat!

--
Jean B.