“Garden Season” Vegetable Ragout
The name points to a dacha — the small summer garden plot most families outside the city keep — and the ingredient list is simply what is ripe there in August: young cabbage, zucchini, tomatoes, onion, carrot. The rice is not a side here but a thickener, soaking up the vegetable juices and turning a loose braise into a dense one-pot meal.
The bouillon cube question
A crumbled cube stands in for meat stock, the way it did in every Soviet kitchen, but it is mostly salt — so season separately only at the very end, and lightly. Without one, a spoonful of thick tomato paste plus a pinch of dried mushrooms ground to powder gives you a deeper savory base. The margarine in the original is a period detail; butter does the same job and adds an aroma that oil cannot.
The braise starts with just half a cup of water, and that restraint matters. Cabbage and zucchini release their own moisture in the first five minutes, so extra liquid only turns the pot into soup and cooks the rice to mush. Use long-grain rice: a short round grain sheds too much starch and glues the vegetables together.
300 g of cabbage is about 10 oz, roughly a quarter of a medium head, and the zucchini should match it by weight. Let the finished pot rest covered for a few minutes before serving so the rice absorbs the last of the juices.
Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 447 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Shred the cabbage and cut the zucchini into cubes.
Put them in a pot with half a cup of water and braise, covered, for 20 minutes.
Add the rice and the crumbled bouillon cube, and leave it to finish cooking.
Meanwhile, shred the onion and carrot and fry them in a skillet.
Toward the end of frying, add the chopped tomatoes and minced garlic and heat everything through together.
When the rice is done, tip in the fried vegetables, the margarine, and the chopped herbs, stir, and let it sit covered for a few minutes.
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