Squirrel Sorrow Soup

During the period I lived in Germany, a new name emerged for one of my favorite Latvian dishes — sorrel soup. At that time, in everyday life I mostly spoke English, and someone once asked me what I was making. I said it was “sorrel soup.” Since “sorrel” sounds a bit like “sorrow” or even “squirrel” (after all, who knows what those strange Latvians are really stewing in their kitchens 😄), ever since then sorrel soup has been “squirrel sorrow soup” to me.

It’s one of my go-to autumn dishes when I’m abroad, because I crave something dark, thick, and hearty — and fresh sorrel is rarely available. In Latvia, though, I would eat it more in spring, when the first greens appear. Traditionally, you’d have some leftover grains in the pantry — barley, pearl barley, potatoes, maybe a piece of smoked meat, and so on.

In Eastern European shops you can sometimes buy sorrel in jars, or I bring it with me from Latvia. If you have sorrel, you can gather everything else around it, even if the ingredients aren’t exactly the same as back home. Dried or smoked ribs elsewhere might not be quite the same, but you can get very close to the familiar flavor.