observations

Ukrainian Entree

KAPUSNIAK
(Sauerkraut Soup)

INGREDIENTS

1 garlic clove
1 medium onion
1¼ pounds pork spare ribs
9 cups water
1 bay leaf

1 large carrot
2 medium potatoes
¾ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
4½ cups sauerkraut

1 tablespoon minced onion
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons sour cream
2 tablespoons dill or parsley

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Mince garlic clove and 1 medium onion. Add pork spare ribs, water, bay leaf, garlic clove, and onion to large pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 50 minutes or until meat can be pulled of the bones with a fork. Stir occasionally. Remove pork ribs.

While pork ribs simmer, peel potatoes and chop them into ½” cubes. Pull pork off ribs with fork. Chop pull pork into ½” cubes. Mince carrot. Add pulled pork, carrot, potato, pepper, and salt to simmering pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Add sauerkraut. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 25 minutes or until potato softens. Stir enough to prevent burning.

While sauerkrautn/pork/potato soup simmers, add vegetable oil and 1 tablespoon minced onion to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add flour. Reduce heat to medium and sauté for 5 minutes or until flour browns. If necessary, add just enough stock from pot to prevent the flour from clumping.

Add minced onion/flour mix from pan to pot. Stir until well blended. Fold in sour cream to soup in pot. Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish with dill or parsley. Goes well with guests who appreciate your culinary exploits.

TIDBITS

1) Kapusniak is served in a bowl.

2) That is on a table.

3) Which is below your head.

4) Because of that you have to bend your head down to see the bowl.

5) You have keep your head down as you guide your spoon to the bowl.

6) Sure, that action is a snap. You probably have been doing successfully for years.

7) But that very act of bending your head forward places a strain on a your neck.

8) And you look down at your food multiple times a day for every day of your life,

9) The stresses on your neck builds up every time you eat like this.

10) Then one day, later on in your life, you wake up with a blinding pain in your neck.

11) You might even have to go to your doctor for a muscle relaxer.

12) How did this pain happen to you? And all of a sudden.

13) It did not happen all of a sudden. You brought this painful event forward every time you ate from bowls and plates that rested on the table.

14) But the bowl doesn’t have to sit on the table.

15) It’s better to have your bowl hover at mouth level.

16) Then you won’t need to bend your noggin down as much.

17) You’ll find yourself getting fewer and fewer neck pains. Less severe too.

18) How do you make your soup bowl hover?

19) Simple, attach an anti-grav device to it. Frustratingly, these gizmos remain hard to find as of press time. CostcoTM doesn’t even carry it, even though people say they have everything.

21) No problem. Buy yourself a drone. Attach a rope holding a cradle to the drone. Place your soup bowl in the cradle and set your drone to hover such that the soup bowl is continually at mouth level, and Bob’s your uncle.

22) Bob really is nice to have gifted your with a soup-carrying drone. Be sure to thank him.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.