Clear barszcz with meat-filled uszka

Rinse meat and mushroom, clean vegetables, peel and chop onion, peel and quarter beets. Cover with 6 c. cold salted water and cook until tender. Strain, add beet sour, garlic crushed with salt, pepper and sugar to taste.

Grind meat from soup, add finely chopped and fried onion, add salt and pepper to taste. Sift flour onto a breadboard, add egg, salt and approx.
1 c. lukewarm water. Knead dough until elastic. Divide into two portions. Roll out one part thin. Keep the second under a bowl so it does not dry. Cut dough sheets into 11/2 -inch squares, put filling in the middle of each, fold in half to form a triangle and pinch the edges together. Then bend them, join the two bottom corners and pinch together to form the uszka ("little ears"). Cook in a big pot of boiling salted water. When they begin to float on the surface, remove with a slotted spoon and douse with a little cold water or add a little fresh butter so they do not stick together.

Put a few, still warm, into each bowl of barszcz just before serving.

Ingredients:
Clear barszcz:
1 lb. beets
0.5 lb. soup vegetables (carrot, parsnip, celery root, leek)
0.75 lb. meat with bone
1 medium onion
1 dried mushroom
1-2 c. beet sour
garlic clove
salt
ground pepper
sugar

Uszka:
Dough:
0.75 c. flour
1 egg
salt

Filling:
0.75 c. flour
1 egg
salt
cooked meat from soup
1 small onion
1 t. cooking oil

Abbreviations:
c. - cup
lb. - pound
oz. - ounce
pt. - pint
t. - teaspoon
T. - tablespoon

Reprinted from Polish Cooking, with permission from Exlibris, Galeria Polskiej Książki

Recipes by Alina Fedak

Copyright by Exlibris, Galeria Polskiej Książki, Warszawa 1998
Plac Trzech Krzyży 16
00-499 Warsaw Poland
Telephone: +48(22)628-3107
Facsimile: +48(22)628-3155
ISBN 83-87071-32-3

Polish Cooking
...A cook is an artist creating impermanent works. Fortunately, they sometimes stay in our memory for a long time.... Mirosław Reszczyk