Cycle 5 – Item 284
16 (Thu) October 2014
Borscht
3.5
at Shinok
-Central Administrative, Moscow, Russia-
with WHO colleagues
Mission to Russia (Day 6)
-
- Day 1 (5.279 Assorted Hot Mezzah)
- Day 2 (5.280 Black Sturgeon Caviar with Mini Pancakes)
- Day 3 (5.281 Russian Goodies)
- Day 4 (5.282 Pancakes with Rabbit)
- Day 5 (5.283 Kyurza)
- Day 6 (5.284 Borshch)
- Day 7 (5.285 Red Mullet Fillets with Couscous)
- Day 8 (5.286 Chili Mango Prawns with Asparagus Couscous)
In Moscow. Here to provide technical/legal support to Member States from the Western Pacific at the 6th Conference of the Parties (COP6) of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). Very exciting, both as the biggest tobacco control event of the year, and my first mission outside our region.
WORK
DINNER
Earlier in the day at lunch, I was telling my colleagues about the barnyard at Shinok, so they were keen to check the place out for dinner.
After 5 days of eating in solitude, I finally got to enjoy dinner with people. Not that I’ve been avoiding socialization in CAL’s absence, it just kinda turned out that way every night. And CAL always make things happen.
Borscht is a Ukrainian dish. Soup, typically starts with a meat stock, either beef or pork, including the meat, boiled with beets, onions, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, served with sour cream. The beet provides the soup’s signature bright red color, which then turns a freakishly unnatural hot pink when the sour cream is mixed in. Ubiquitous among the USSR culinary bloc countries, classic communist comfort cuisine, comrade.
The food was excellent. For starters, the borshch was amazing: rich beefy broth, sweetish-but-not-sweet beety flavor, perfectly seasoned, supple strips of beef and beet, along with cabbage, onion, carrot – didn’t even think to add sour cream. The appetizers and sides, though not great, were mostly good enough to support the main players. Glad I agreed to come back.
(See also BOOZE)
(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)
(See also RESTAURANTS IN RUSSIA)