the cold beetroot soup of the old Commonwealth: kefir and grated beet whisked to shocking pink, with cucumber, dill and egg, and hot potatoes served alongside
Origin: Vilnius, Minsk & the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
From the journey of Beetroot.
The colour is the first thing anybody says about it. Grated cooked beetroot stirred into soured milk turns a flat, opaque, almost fluorescent pink that looks synthetic and is not, and Lithuanians have leaned into it: šaltibarščiai is photographed more than it is written about, and Vilnius has held a festival for it. The soup itself is cold, sour, and extremely plain: kefir or buttermilk, beetroot, cucumber, spring onion, dill, and a hard-boiled egg. It belongs to a region rather than to a country. Lithuanian šaltibarščiai, Belarusian khaladnik, and Polish chłodnik litewski are the same soup under three names, and the Polish one openly calls itself Lithuanian; the borders that now separate them are two centuries younger than the recipe, which belongs to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. All three names mean the same thing, a cold thing, and the dish is a straightforward answer to a hot July in a place with no refrigeration and a great deal of soured milk. The hot boiled potatoes served on a separate plate are not a garnish and are not optional. They are the point of contrast: the soup is fridge-cold and the potatoes come out of the pan steaming, and eating the two together in the same mouthful is what the dish is for. A khaladnik served without them will be regarded as unfinished. The beetroot is usually boiled or roasted and grated, but a good deal of Belarusian and Lithuanian practice uses pickled beetroot instead, or the brine from it, which sharpens the whole thing. Either way the soup wants to be more sour than seems reasonable when tasted from the spoon, because the potatoes and the egg blunt it considerably on the plate.
Everything except the potatoes must be properly cold, and the beetroot in particular has to be cool before it meets the kefir or the soup will split. The hot potatoes on the side are structural rather than decorative and the contrast is the whole design. Kefir gives the correct sourness; buttermilk is milder and wants more lemon. Grate the beetroot rather than dicing it, so the colour bleeds through the whole bowl. It keeps for two days refrigerated and the colour deepens; add the cucumber fresh on the second day, since it goes limp overnight.
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