This last Sunday, we celebrated the feast day of the saint for whom our Church is named: Joy of All Who Sorrow. This is, of course, the Theotokos, known to many in the West as Mary the Mother of God. Being a feast day and not during a fasting period, it means there was a lot of good food at our “coffee” after the service.
While it is called a coffee (and there is some excellent coffee to be had as one of our members has a relative who owns a coffee roasting business), it usually is something of meal. That is because we generally fast from all food and drink (even water) starting no later than midnight Saturday night before partaking of the Eucharist. Some even do longer periods. Technically I’m exempt because of health and now age, but other than enough water to go with the medicines and such I have to take (and I take them about 0300 so that at least six hours have passed before service begins) I do my best to keep the fast.
Since becoming a Chanter, I haven’t been able to cook or do as much with food as I would like to do. There were also some issues that came up with kitchen access where I rent, but those are getting resolved (and I’m developing alternatives). For this day, however, I really wanted to do something nice. So, I had seen a recipe for an Eastern European soup that sounded good, and would be a good (close enough) ethnic fit. That soup is called Kapustnica.
The picture above really doesn’t do it justice, especially since my version really was more a stew than a soup. It is technically a sauerkraut soup; but, reality is that is a bunch of sausage and smoked meats cooked with some sauerkraut, mushrooms, and onions. With good sauerkraut, it is also extremely tasty. Here’s what I did:
To start, I diced a huge white onion medium fine (not coarse, not fine, in between), and sliced three large cloves of garlic as thin as I could. The onion, garlic, and three fresh bay leaves (use dried if you can’t get fresh) then were cooked/sauteed until tender (clear) in a mixture of lard and bacon drippings (a few T, didn’t really measure it). Three tablespoons of sweet smoked paprika were then added and the mixture cooked until the paprika turns dark and roasted.
As I was cooking the onion, I prepared my crockpot. Into the bottom I put the sauerkraut (I used a jar of Polish sauerkraut with some carrot included, mild and good) and a bag of dried mushrooms that I had rehydrated using white wine for a couple of days before use. In this case, I used a white wine from Romania as it both fit the spirit of the recipe and the deli where I got the meats and sauerkraut had it at a decent price. My own take is that a slightly sweet, not dry wine, is best. This one really worked well.
The onion/garlic mixture then went on top of the mushrooms and kraut. On top of that, I chopped up a couple of different types of Eastern European sausage (I picked two that looked good from the meat case), pretty much a whole smoked pork loin, and a small chunk of smoked cured beef. The beef is the only thing I would do differently, as the cure made it hard and it still wasn’t quite tender even after cooking. To be honest, at the meat case, I had just pointed and said: one of those, one of those, one of those, one of those… I went with what looked good.
Since I had drained the kraut (not much draining was needed to be honest), I put in some bone broth and some vegetable broth as liquid to get the cooking underway. I didn’t fill to the top as I had to transport the crockpot to Church, and a full pot will spill. Kept it roughly a couple of inches from the top, but was more than enough to cook the mixture.
It did cook faster than I expected, even on low in the crockpot. Figure about four hours as good. I ended up cutting it off a bit after seven when I went to bed, and around midnight it had finally cooled enough to go into the refrigerator. Once I had it at the Church, I plugged it back in, set it to low, added the water (and took the picture) and then let it go. Some wonderful people got it to the serving table for me, and I did make it to the kitchen in time to get the sour cream out of the refrigerator so people could add a dollop to top the bowls of soup if they wanted.
I will note that it is a rich soup/stew, and adding the sour cream is tasty but may be gilding the lily a bit. It was a hit, and I have very little cleaning to do of the crockpot. I also picked up a box of Russian chocolates to go with the other sweets. Someone did some meatballs, there was homemade fried chicken, and someone did some very nice cabbage rolls as well. Lots of other food, but tried to stay mostly keto.
So, Kapustnica is fairly quick and easy to do (couple of hours on the stove top in a big pot), and is also quite tasty and filling. If you don’t have a good Eastern European deli nearby, use some good smoked sausage (without corn syrup, Meijer brand here is good for that) and whatever other smoked meat you can find nearby. Or, heck, smoke some of your own on the grill or in a smoker and use that. I will simply say that the better the kraut, the better the soup/stew. Don’t have dried mushrooms, use fresh. Thing is, have fun and enjoy.
Getting hit by lightning is not fun! If you would like to help me in my recovery efforts, and to start a truly new life, feel free to hit the fundraiser at A New Life on GiveSendGo, use the options in the Tip Jar in the upper right, or drop me a line to discuss other methods. If you want to know some of what it is going for, read here. There is also the Amazon Wish List in the Bard’s Jar. It is thanks to your gifts and prayers that I am still going. Thank you.
