Russian dinner party

We invited some friends over for borscht, so we had to think of some dishes to go with it—and we thought Russian.  We prepared deviled eggs, salad olivier, and hot borscht, with a simple apple-pear crisp for dessert.

cold borscht

What better thing to do with beets on a hot summer day?  We followed the recipe from Anya von Bremzen’s Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook, which I wholeheartedly recommend; it also has a great hot borscht recipe. We made some modifications to the cold borscht recipe to make it more like the cold borscht (actually, svekol’nik) made by ib’s great-grandmother.