A bortsch for gourmande

There are few items on the list of foods I really hate. Beets is the number 1. When I was a kid I was saying “blanche ou rouge, la betterave, c’est ma bete noire” which doesn’t translate and mean beets were my enemy. My grand-parents loved them and had tons from their gardens. I was the only person 300 km around that didn’t love beets, it seemed. The menu was not optional, not eating was not an option either… A real nightmare veggie.
Japan is a safe country for that. Beets are an exotic rarity here (actually the leaves are very popular, which is good for me, I only dislike the root). I should be happy.
NO ! Because I love borstch. I even crave for it. So I have to buy canned beets at a ridicule price for pig food.

It’s a recipe of… nowhere. Totally at my taste, with local ingredients -except the infamous can.

My special bortsch is very simple : red beets, red cabbage, red skinned sweet potatoes, red onion…
Start melting a little beef fat. It’s the secret of the mellow taste. We get free cubes of beef fat in all shops here, they are for sukiyaki… or borstch.
Start frying the onion and 1/2 clove garlic. Add a cup of cubed mushrooms (feet of maitake). Add the potato, the cabbage, the beets, their juice, sliced daikon radish, a tbs of paprika, water. Simmer 2 hours.
In the rice cooker :

You get those very tender reddened veggies :

Add salt and pepper at your taste. Serve with yuzu lemon for the acid touch.

And a little yogurt.

What’s that yellow object ?
TO BE CONTINUED

Edit :
How do you spell it ? Me too…
borscht, borsch, bortsch, borstch, borsh, barszcz, borshch….
Azerbaijani: borș,
Czech: boršč,
Estonian: borš,
Latvian: boršs,
Lithuanian: barščiai,
Polish: barszcz,
Romanian: borș,
Russian: борщ, borshch,
Slovak: boršč,
Turkish: Borş
Ukrainian: борщ, borshch,
Yiddish: בארשט, borsht.
Japanese : ボルシチ but purists spell it : ボールシュチュ

I had 4 servings of that dish :

Plain
With potato cheese dumplings
With pampushki buns
Reheated with maitake mushrooms (no photo)