okroshka {cold russian soup}

Name: okroshka {cold russian soup}
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 4
Ingredients: 1 boiled potato, cut into cubes; 3 hard boiled eggs, chopped; 3 cucumbers, but in small cubes, seeds removed; 1 bunch radishes, thinly sliced; 1 small bunch scallions, thinly sliced; 500 gr yogurt or kefir; dill, coriander, parsley or chives, chopped; juice of 1 lemon; sparkling water to taste.; Georgian salt to garnish

June 30, 2015 by Elizabeth 31 Comments

I’m not big on cooking in Rome once the heat hits even in the best of times. It’s high season in terms of tours, so after a long day in the sun, the last thing I feel like doing is getting behind a hotter stove. But this year? It’s about 100 times worse.

We are doing work on our apartment. Big work. Like close your eyes and pray it’s over fast kind of work. I know that they say doing work on your house while you are living in it is like child birth. The pain is intense, but once it’s over the result is worth it. And, eventually, the memory of the pain you went through fades. I know this is true, since we’ve already been through it at least twice. Still, that doesn’t make the current pain any easier to take.

So the thought of eating – or much less cooking – in our dusty and dark apartment is just too much to bear. For dinner these days we have either been going out (thank god my neighborhood is full of spots like this, this, this and this) or else relying on the kindness of strangers. Luckily my neighborhood is also full of kind strangers. Well, not really stranger. Good friends actually. Who have taken pity on us by inviting us in at dinner time.

This past Saturday Domenico and I were on our way to Fatamorgana, when one good friend saw us walking by and called out to us from her window. I guess we were looking especially forlorn since right then and there she invited us to dinner.

“Want to come over tonight and have some boiled fish?” Eugenia yelled down to us. “Yes!” we both cried, knowing full well that a) saying she was cooking boiled fish for dinner was probably just Eugenia’s dry sense of humor or b) even if it was boiled fish, it was going to be fabulous boiled fish, since Eugenia is a fantastic cook.

And in fact, that night when we showed up there actually was fish (line caught sea bass, broiled not boiled) as well as this totally amazing and beautiful soup.

Call Okroshka, it is a Russian yogurt-based cold soup. Yogurt gets mixed with chopped radishes, hard boiled eggs, cucumbers, scallions and boiled potatoes. It sounds simple (and it is) but somehow the combination of tangy and salty, smooth and crunchy makes it THE perfect summer food.

Both Eugenia and her husband Vladimir are some of the most design focussed people I know, so of course the soup was served in the perfect bowls, with the perfect utensils and in the perfect apartment. And the apartment? It was white, and clean and there was not a worker to be found.

I hope we get invited back again soon.