LP's latest poll

Oy!

Schav is sorrel soup, sasha.

I saw that when I googled schav (to double check spelling) but my mom used to get some made with spinach. So I went with that. Either way, it's not as good as borscht but not bad. And one of very few cold soups I'll eat.

One other thing that occurs to me. Are they talking about the food in general, or how much visitors enjoy the food in the country? I would suspect that, right now, in much of Afghanistan the criteria for an enjoyable meal are: 1) there is food, 2) it is edible, and 3) there is enough for everyone. But there are reportedly excellent Afghani restaurants in other countries. I've always wanted to eat at Helmand in San Francisco, for instance.

I loved the food in Ethiopia, but I have seen a number of reports from people who hated it. They didn't like injera--too sour, weird texture; an LP poster said "just blows up in my stomach." The food all seemed the same--stews & purees. Too spicy. Hate eating with fingers.

NorthAm #14 and 18
Are many of these generally available? I would guess not.

That's the point. Generally, the choice is quite limited and quality is often substandard.
It's been more than ten years since I last visited Russia. My most recent experience (last year) is from Ukraine - it's comparable as most of the food is similar to Russian.

If my grandmother made borscht, it would be served hot, without sour cream and very likely with some beef in it.

There is a cold version of borscht which I know from Poland. It's a summer soup, that you might compare to the Spanish gazpacho. It's meatless, with only veggie ingredients, where the main one are finely chopped beets (the green leafy part). Usually a hard boiled egg half is added to the soup.
chłodnik (cold borscht)

Edited by: Fieldgate, to add wiki link

Cookbook author Bert Greene says that in the 1930s, his mother & grandmother "in the best American-Jewish tradition" refrigerated borscht, then "diluted [it] to lukewarm neutrality" by adding hot boiled potatoes at the table. It looks like his maternal grandparents emigrated to the US from Russia.

Fieldgate, that same cold borscht exists farther east than Poland; here's a Russian recipe. There's an extra vowel in it: kholodnik. I assume that the name comes from kholodno, cold.

The recipe seems to call for chopping the cooked egg.

Ah, but here's a Ukrainian recipe with an illustration like the Polish version.

Edited by NorthAmerican.

Yes, NorthAm.
That's why I added the wiki link to my previous post, where there are other versions of chłodnik, including Russian.
You're correct about the name which is derived from "cold" and can be translated as "cooler" (a noun).

The Ukrainian recipe is different as meat is one of the ingredints, while Polish cold borscht, or chłodnik, is a veggie soup.

India
France
Spain
Italy
USA! USA! USA! (I jest...)

One feature of Indian food here in Vancouver-well Indian restaurant food-is over salting and that puts me off.

Is Indian food on the subcontinent over salted?

The popular view of certian recipe's on a certain dish seem at times differ at times to the original. Rick Stein in conversation with a local chef points out that in Carbonara that cream should never be used, and softer cheeses should be used in the dish. But in popular recipe's for the dish over and over state that ne need to add cream and hard cheese to the dish.