Pumpkin soup with barley and mushroom ushki
St. Petersburg chef Ilya Lazerson prepares the cream soup for the competition.
In September, the culinary olympiad «Legend» was held in Perm. We have already shared two recipes of notable dishes prepared at the olympiad — pike-perch in baked milk and shtei milostnykh according to an Old Believers’ recipe. This time we’ll tell you about another one — a creamy barley soup with mushroom ushki.
The recipe’s author is St. Petersburg chef Ilya Lazerson, who runs his own signature culinary studio. The recipe has two parts — a pumpkin-and-pearl-barley cream soup and crisp mushroom ushki.
Ushki are a variety of dumplings. It is a traditional dish of Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian cuisines. Ushki differ from regular dumplings by their small size and ear-like shape. They can have meat or mushroom filling and be served in soup or as a standalone dish.
Make the ushki
Make a standard dough as for dumplings, ravioli, or pasta. The chef’s method is this: add eggs to the flour, one after another, mixing until you get a dense, thick dough. Knead by hand or in a stand mixer. Don’t forget a pinch of salt.
«A little trick is that I add onion powder to the flour: about 1 gram per 80 grams of flour, and then the dough explodes with flavor», says Ilya Lazerson.
Roll the dough out thinly and cut it into small squares — about the length of the short side of a matchbox.
Place a mushroom filling in the center of each square, fold into a triangle, and press the edges tightly as for dumplings. The triangles look like tiny Napoleon hats.
Fry the ushki in small batches in plenty of boiling vegetable oil, carefully lift them out with a slotted spoon, and transfer to paper towels or a napkin to absorb excess oil. A deep fryer works too.
Vivid color contrasts set the base for the dish before finishing touches appear.
Make the cream soup
Simmer pumpkin flesh in chicken broth. Add the already cooked pearl barley; before cooking the barley, you may skip rinsing — it will provide the desired stickiness and thickness. Salt lightly.
Once the pumpkin and barley are cooked, blend the soup and add cream to taste.
After blending with cream, the mixture becomes a smooth, velvety puréed soup.
Pour the resulting cream soup into a pumpkin and garnish the top with crisp parsley sprigs. Arrange the crisp ushki alongside and on top.
Crisp mushroom ushki and parsley garnish complete the elegant pumpkin-and-barley soup.
A delicate puréed soup with an unusual yet nostalgia-tinged porridge note contrasts with the crunchy ushki. Enjoy!
