Okroshka, Russian Summer Soup

Trips to my hometown in Russia bring me back to my childhood: I am with mom and dad again, feeling loved, knowing I don’t need bold goals and tangible accomplishments to deserve appreciation, going to the places where the family usually gathers and eating the food I grow up with. Every return home makes me revisit the dishes I have nearly forgotten while living abroad for so long. This time it was okroshka, a cold soup no family gathering in summer would be complete without.

Many okroshka occasions surfaced in my memory. I could remember the picnics in the woods with mom and dad and their colleagues or friends - always by the Volga river, looking for the dry woods to build a fire, making diadems of forest flowers, foraging for medicinal herbs or playing badminton while the grown ups were grilling shashlyk, a grotesque reincarnation of Turkish siş kebab, marinaded meat chunks on a skewer, another indispensable food of the Russian summer feasts.

I also remembered summer family gatherings at the grandma’s garden when a large table was set under the branchy apple tree in the middle. Unless the occasion was celebratory, the grown ups could spend the day in the garden errands and then my mom made a quick-to-put-together lunch of okroshka. With fresh cucumbers that had white and pale green stripes, bumpy skins and tiny black thorns when only picked by the caring hands of grandma. And fresh small radishes covered in soil picked by my mom, of course under the careful supervision of grandma.

The memories of orkoshka came alive at lunch in a Georgian restaurant in Moscow. I ordered a cold soup with matzoni (Georgian yogurt), grated radish and cucumber, served with a half of boiled quail egg and seasoned with fresh herbs. That soup was not fundamentally different from the okroshka I grew up with. Georgians are certainly not alone in the pursuit of cooling fermented dairy-based no-cook summer soups. That Georgian creation was very close to Armenian cold yogurt soup of matsnaprtosh with yogurt, greens, garlic and green onions. It also reminded Uzbek chalop based on katyk, fermented clotted milk with radish, cucumbers, green onions, basil, dill, coriander and paprika. And with a bit of thinking all those soups are not very far from cacık, refreshing Turkish cold yogurt soup with cucumbers. It’s fascinating to think about the culinary connections in the Caucasian and Central Asia resulting in these strikingly similar cold soups made with locally available fermented dairy products.

But let’s go back to okroshka, a traditional dish of Russia and Ukraine made with finely diced (or crumbled, as the name suggests) vegetables, fragrant herbs, eggs, possibly meat or fish, all combined and dressed. Here is an okroshka recipe from a 18th century Russian cookbook: “Combine leftovers of assorted fried meats - that of four-footed, domestic and wild birds. Pick the meat from the bones and crumble along with the onion, fresh or fermented cucumbers, add fermented plums, pits removed, combine, mash with a spoon, drizzle with cucumber or plum brine, add vinegar and let sit. Water down with kvass before serving”. Kvass, a cooling and nourishing beverage of fermented rye rusks and a backbone of the Russian diet since the times immemorial had been a ubiquitous component of okroshka.

A perfect way to utilize assorted leftovers and a nourishing meal at once, orkoshka has become a classic food gracing the tables of both peasant and noble families. As the dish assumes a rather free-style approach, with time various takes on okroshka emerged. Somewhere Central Asian tradition of dairy-based cold soups met okroshka, and we started adding sour cream or kefir to this soup, along with kvass or skipping kvass altogether.

This time okroshka started with my craving for kvass. Here in Istanbul I regularly make beet kvass, a nourishing drink and a clever shortcut to the traditional Russian fermented beverage. Every time I drink it I have the same vision: green-tilted jars with rye bread rusks, sugar or homemade berry jam and water on the grandma’s window-sill. Grandma used to make kvass every summer, and as it takes at least for 3-4 days to ferment she’d put a few three-liter jars to work, then empty them a few days later and immediately put another batch of kvass to ferment so we have a new batch ready as we finish the old one.

Before coming to Russia I asked mom to prepare some kvass for me - with rye rusks, no yeast and no sugar, but little honey instead. By the time we arrived the kvass was ready: with a pale brown tilt, thick and tasting of sourdough like a good light beer does only more subtle. Once the kvass was ready, okroshka was in order.

Our family okroshka recipe includes boiled egg and potato, young radish and cucumber, greens (“abundant quantity of greens”, according to my dad) and boiled sausage. Since the whole family has gone vegetarian, we now skip the sausage. While traditionally the ingredients are mixed and combined with kvass, I have been following a Soviet tradition and pouring my homemade kefir over the vegetables and herbs. As my mother authoritatively stated, “It’s either kefir or kvass with sour cream, that’s right”.

This stay in Russia was all about orkoshka: we served it as a starter when receiving my aunt, made it out of leftovers into a quick meal on another occasion and fixed it while picnicking in the woods. And that’s characteristic for okroshka: as long as it’s summer, the dish works for any occasion.