Kvass Patriotism
Our classic cold soup is okroshka. It seems we all know everything about okroshka, a sort of summer-lightened version of national pride! Moreover, the broad masses are divided into two unequal groups: some are simply crazy about okroshka, others, following Eugene Onegin, worry: “I’m afraid lingonberry water might do me harm.” Meaning, won’t kvass combined with sour cream and cucumbers create an explosive mixture in the stomach? I hasten to dispel the doubts of the cautious: if the products are fresh, okroshka will do no harm, only good.
Take kvass, for example. Kvass for okroshka is a whole separate topic. First, it’s better if it’s homemade, not store-bought – why do we need extra preservatives? The ideal option is white bread kvass, slightly more sour than regular drinking bread kvass. Second, it should be perfected. Namely, thickened with egg yolks ground with mustard, or grated horseradish and sour cream. The resulting mixture is quite potent – but it only improves the taste of okroshka.
The rest is simple. Almost any vegetables and meat products are suitable for okroshka, as long as they are finely chopped. That is, crumbled. In principle, you can stick to the classics: cucumbers, boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and green onions. Diet-friendly and very summery.
Not Afraid of Botvinya
It is possible, however, that in the process of okroshka creativity (especially if, in Old Russian style, you start experimenting with the liquid base, swapping kvass for whey or buttermilk, “sour shchi” – the very fizzy kind that was bottled in champagne bottles – or cucumber brine, sorrel broth, or beet marinade) you will end up with a whole range of other cold soups that have only a tangential relation to okroshka.
For example, if you dilute poached sorrel greens and young beet tops with kvass, add the requisite cucumbers, green onions, and season with horseradish, serve crayfish necks and pieces of boiled noble fish (formerly called “red,” now “white,” or even sturgeon balyk or salmon belly) on a separate plate, and crushed ice on a third plate, you get classic botvinya. The true queen of Russian cold soups – okroshka is nothing compared to it! And one can only wonder at the compiler of the famous four-volume explanatory dictionary, D. N. Ushakov, who dismissed it with a terse: “Botvinya – a cold dish made from kvass, boiled greens (spinach), and fish.” If only the esteemed Dmitry Nikolaevich himself could eat such botvinya, wherever his spirit may now be dwelling in paradise...
Aria of the Spanish Guest
I won’t say anything about Britain – apart from cold lamb leg soup, no authentic recipes come to mind. But practically all over the rest of Europe, there are plenty of liquid summer delights. Whether they are better than okroshka or worse is purely a matter of taste.
I, for instance, would gladly trade all three plates of botvinya for one bowl of gazpacho. First, I will pour contempt on all those hapless cooks who stubbornly classify gazpacho as part of Italian cuisine. No – sultry Spain, and only it!
Sometimes it is also called “liquid salad” – but in fact, hardly any of the great cold soups have escaped that fate. Here’s the subtlety: add more liquid, and you get a first course; reduce its amount, and you get something like a salad. Anyone who has tried gazpacho on the Costa del Sol or Costa del Azahar knows: the main thing in gazpacho is fresh ripe (sometimes even overripe) tomatoes, which give the Spanish cold soup its unique scarlet color. To which any culinary historian will retort: the quintessence of gazpacho is not tomatoes, but... bread.
After all, tomatoes appeared in Spain only after the conquest of America, while gazpacho seems to have been revered on the Iberian Peninsula forever. At least, its name is traced either to the Roman panis, or to the Mozarabic (Visigothic) caspa, or to Arabic or Jewish roots. Meaning, in principle, the same thing: either bread, or pieces of it, crumbs. Because originally gazpacho most resembled a simple tyurya: bread, water, olive oil, garlic, and salt.
And yet, gazpacho gained first all-Spanish and then worldwide fame dressed in a tomato-colored toga. The rest is a matter of personal culinary preference: chopping vegetables into pieces and pouring tomato juice over them, or pureeing everything together in a blender, adding vinegar or dry wine for piquancy, adding croutons, or just serving a crusty baguette “on the side.” The set of vegetables also varies from cook to cook: besides tomatoes, they can include cucumbers, peppers, onions, young zucchini.
But still, for us visiting tourists, the classic Andalusian gazpacho is more familiar – a not-too-thick puree of a mixture of salad vegetables with a Mediterranean note in taste. That is exactly what is sold in Spanish supermarkets in cartons (for those in the know!) and what is so pleasant to sip while sitting on a shady balcony during siesta. Just one “but”: don’t listen to those who say gazpacho should be eaten cold but not icy. It’s exactly the opposite: ice cubes should float in the bowl or glass and melt as slowly as possible! And it’s better if the ice is made from frozen lemon juice.
East-West
Among our Slavic brothers, both Western and Southern, technology has not yet progressed to the point of packaging cold soups in bags industrially. They still mostly prepare them the old-fashioned way – by hand, by hand. In the West, most often on beet “kvass” or pickle juice from pickled beets; in the South, kefir, yogurt, and the like rule. The main thing is that the base has a sourness (and this is an indispensable condition for the vast majority of cold soups!), but what exactly it is and what is added to it... The choice is vast and difficult to briefly describe.
Belarusian coldniki and mushroom kvass (literally, mushrooms boiled in kvass with onions and spices - I haven't tried it, and I'm not tempted), Polish cold borscht and Baltic beetroot soups on one hand, various tarators on the other. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, and one could write long and tasty about each piece of ice from it.
Perhaps the best thing here is to turn to the basics. And the best illustration is the example of cold borscht - but Lithuanian borscht. As befits West Slavic cold soups, it is unthinkable without beet broth and pieces of beet itself, but at the same time - unthinkable without kefir. Why? Because Turkish and, more broadly, Turkic influence has always been felt stronger in Lithuania. That's just how history turned out.
And the vast majority of Turkic variations on something refreshing in the heat invariably boil down to soups made from fermented milk products. Moreover, everything we consider our own, original (well, except perhaps sour cream, although that is also debatable), all the kefirs and curdled milk - come from there, from the East. And the trendy yogurt too.
That is, the base of Balkan and Asian soups is roughly the same, let's leave the subtle taste differences between different types of fermented milk to expert tasters.
There is inevitably still a lot of interesting things left overboard, though not always, of course, edible. For example, I would not dare to try Volga ledenets (a cold fish soup with milk and sago) or Ukrainian taratuta (also a milk soup, but with pumpkin instead of fish). They have no sourness, and gastroenterological doubts assail me. The French artichoke 'cream' in cold form also does not inspire much enthusiasm - as does vichyssoise, another chilled cream soup, but only from potatoes and onions, made with chicken broth and, despite the name, having nothing to do with France.
But I would gladly taste Indian tamatar turtal made from lentils with tomatoes, the South African version of tarator, or cream-of-cheese soup frozen to a thick consistency - one of Vanderbilt's favorite dishes - but unfortunately, a convenient opportunity has not yet arisen. And there are also many cold fruit soups, including such exotic ones as, for example, Haitian consommé of oranges. Hungarian cherry, Polish peach, Czech blueberry... But these, no matter how you look at it, are desserts - and desserts so unique that they not just ask, but insistently demand a separate story about themselves!