This week's country is one I've heard of before, but it hasn't been on my radar in a long time, and I don't really know much about it. Because of precisely that, though, I hope it's going to be an interesting one to explore. Let's travel back to Eastern Europe and cook something from Belarus 😉

Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country, as I mentioned, in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. It spans an area of 207,600 square kilometers (80,200 sq mi) with a population of 9.1 million.

Throughout the medieval era, Belarusian lands were governed by independent principalities before coming under Lithuanian and then Polish-Lithuanian rule for roughly five centuries. Following the late 18th-century partitions of Poland-Lithuania, the territory was absorbed into the Russian Empire. After the 1917 Revolution and ensuing Civil War, it became the Byelorussian SSR and a founding republic of the Soviet Union in 1922, though it lost significant territory to Poland after the Polish-Soviet War. Its modern borders were largely settled by 1939–1945. World War II was devastating, costing Belarus a quarter of its population and half its economic output, yet the republic emerged as a UN founding member in 1945 and subsequently transformed from an agrarian into an industrial economy.

The parliament of the republic proclaimed the sovereignty of Belarus on July 27, 1990, and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus gained independence on August 25, 1991.

The country has been a member of the United Nations since its founding and has joined the CIS, the CSTO, the EAEU, the OSCE, and the Non-Aligned Movement. It has shown no aspirations of joining the European Union but maintains a bilateral relationship with the bloc.

Belarusian cuisine has predominantly Slavic roots. Along with a Ruthenian influence, it is also linked with Lithuanian and Polish cuisine because of the long intermingling of these three peoples.

Modern Belarusian cuisine is still heavily influenced by its recent Soviet past, and many local restaurants feature Russian or Soviet dishes rather than true specialties of local cuisine.

The country is known for farming potatoes, and they came to be considered the core ingredient of the national cuisine. It is not surprising, then, that there are more than 300 potato dishes recorded in Belarus.

This week I decided to prepare two dishes from the country again. In part because they seemed easy, and in part because I kinda wanted to try both 😆

As a starter I decided to prepare a traditional soup: Holodnik.

It is a cold beet soup perfect for the hot summer days.

And after the soup I went with a dish with, of course, potatoes: Draniki. Also known as grated potato pancakes.

3 large cooked red beets or 5 small cooked beets

8 cups of water

4 cups of Greek yogurt

1 medium onion or 3 green onions

4 cucumbers

Salt to taste

1 tsp sugar

1 bunch dill

4–6 boiled eggs, optional

600g (1.32 lbs) of potatoes

1 medium onion

1 egg

2 tbsp wheat flour

1 tsp of salt, or to taste

Black pepper to taste

Vegetable oil to fry

Sour cream as a side, optional

First of all, I'm glad all the ingredients for both recipes are easy to get.

The hard part, at least for the Holodnik, was deciding which recipe to use, because the principle of the dish is that it's a cold beet soup, and the ingredients are pretty much the same across different versions. What changes is the way it is prepared, and the dairy base can be either yogurt, Greek yogurt, buttermilk, or kefir.

In my case I went with Greek yogurt because I had two brand-new 1-liter yogurts in my fridge that I used for another thing.

Since this is a cold soup, you have options. You can do everything the same day, starting early, to let everything cool down in time. Or you can prepare it one day before and let it sit in the fridge to enjoy the next day. That's pretty much what I did: I boiled the beets and eggs one day before, then prepared the rest the next day, so it ended up a bit warm, closer to cold, rather than fully cold, but of course not too hot either.

Entirely up to you.

Let's start with the Holodnik: I honestly was a bit skeptical of the result since I had to just mix yogurt and water, pour in the beets, and hope for the best.

Well… that faith paid off. It was a great soup!

I've already had Russian borscht, which is the hot version and includes a couple of other ingredients, but the base remains the same: beets! So I kinda had something to compare to.

My weak point is still sometimes not using enough salt, but that's easily solved by putting in some more. But besides that, it was good, and since it was warm, closer to cold, it really accomplished the goal of being a refreshing dish for the summer.

As for the Draniki: I kinda made a mess in the "remove excess liquid" step because I initially used a paper towel, and dumb me didn't think the paper would just break.

Luckily, I was able to remove the paper, save the potatoes, and try another way. The result? The best potato pancakes I've ever cooked!

They're not exactly round… but at least they're not completely amorphous. But the important thing here is that they were delicious, cooked to perfection, and with the right amount of salt.

Trust the process. In the kitchen, and in life, there are methods that may seem weird, but if they're there, it's for a reason.

Like I said, pouring yogurt into water? It doesn't really sound tasty… but it actually worked!

So yeah, trust the process and have faith that it'll be fine in the end. You could get a tasty soup ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

Again… don't fear using too much salt! 🙄

I know I'm doing better because the Draniki were perfectly seasoned. But still not quite there yet. I need to remind myself this every time I'm in the kitchen: use salt! One more pinch!

At least my problem is that I underuse, which is easy to fix, instead of overusing. But still! I should know better by now ಠ_ಠ

Another country, another pair of dishes that go by.

For my next country, it's actually one that excites me, and one I'd like to visit one day, hopefully not too far in the future. Join me next time to cook Belgium!