Beets are such an unassuming little vegetable: they’re the colour of dirt and hard as a coffin nail when you pull them up, then you peel away the outer layer and they’re beautiful.

Though J routinely makes recipes containing beets, I’ve never actually cooked beets, so I decided to try my hand at a beet recipe today. Of course, borscht was the first thing that came to mind, so I started scanning my cookbooks for a recipe. We had a few beets in the pantry, which I supplemented with a handful of tiny beets from the garden.

Now…at least once a week, one of us starts spontaneously belting out “AH, YA, BABOOSHKA, BABOOSHKA, BABOOSHKA, YA YA” and then we tag team the song all day long. For some odd reason, this particular song is on the playlist for the soundtrack of our lives (along with, strangely, J’s completely un-ironic falsetto version of “I’m Havin’ Your Baby”). So today, in honour of our routine destruction of Kate Bush’s song, I am making Babushka Borscht from Isa Does It.

PS When I played the Kate Bush video above, J said, “You mean that’s an actual song?!!” I said, “What do you mean? We sing it all the time!” To which he responded, “I always thought you made it up!” HA!

Anyway…here’s the recipe…

Babushka Borscht

Ingredients

1 tbsp. olive oil (I just sprayed the pan with cooking oil)
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic
salt (I didn’t add any because the broth is quite salty)
6 cups vegetable broth
1 lb. beets, peeled, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
2 russet potatoes, cut in 1/2 inch chunks
1/2 small cabbage, thinly sliced (I didn’t have a cabbage, so I used a bunch of beet greens)
2 tbsp. lemon juice

Top with a drizzle of cashew cream

Directions:
1) Sauté onions in oil for 5 to 7 minutes
2) Add garlic and saute until fragrant (30 seconds)
3) Add everything else, but the lemon juice. Cover and bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer for about 35 minutes
4) Add the lemon juice
5) For the cashew cream, soak 1/2 cup of cashews in boiling water for half an hour and then blend with 3/4 cup of vegetable broth.