While I have not been eating Polish foods for a very long time as I am vegetarian, there are some things I still miss even though I have lived in the US for almost 15 years. The Horseradish and Beet Relish is one of them. If you are a meat eater, you will find that it is an excellent complement to a cold cut or a sausage. Horseradish is a European equivalent of Japanese wasabe, but it is white. It is a root and this spring just before Easter was the very first time I have seen it in an American store. Needless to say, I bought this big sturdy root immediately and had to call my mother to hear how to make the relish. You see, in Poland, it is like ketchup: everybody has a jar in the fridge but no one makes it any longer. My mother went on to complain how full of preservatives and sugar the relish in the stores is these days. She had just recently started to make her own too. Good news is: you can do it. It is simple AND delicious. Below is how I tweaked it. One word of caution: it may make your eyes teary, so your fingers away from your eyes!

Ingredients:
a horseradish root, cleaned, skin peeled off, cut in chunks
a bunch of beet roots, cleaned under the running water with a vegetable brush to remove all soil, about 4 beets, stems and leaves cut off, skins left on
Lemon juice
Maple syrup grade B or unrefined honey
Vita Mix – if you do not have this blender, you may need to manually grade the horseradish, which will be a challenge (you may need to wear goggles!!!)

1. Fill a cooking pot with water so that the beets are under the water. Cover and cook the beets until a fork goes into the meat of the beets easily.
2. You can cool the cooked beets in cold water. Once they are not too hot to handle, the skin will peel off very easily, so do peel the skin then. Then chop them.
3. Chop the whole horseradish into a few pieces to help the blender blend – blend as well as you can
4. Empty the blender and put all the blended horseradish into a container.
5. Put all the chopped and cooked beets into the blender and add1 T of blended horseradish to it. Add a little bit of lemon juice and a sweetener to it. Blend until smooth. YOu will have to decise if 1 T is enough to make it spicy and interesting to you. It should have a bite to it that clears your sinuses.
6. Keep the rest of the horseradish in the container in the freezer for future needs.

I have just made my second batch of the relish and the horseradish is holding well in the freezer. You can add more horseradish to the beets if you like things very spicy. You will have to experiment with the lemon juice and the sweetener so that the flavor fits you. The interesting factoid is that I ate up my first batch in only a few days. The memory of this food was so lovely. I could not help but spread a little on anything I could think of. Both main ingredients are very medicinal, so next time you see horseradish in your supermarket, try this old Polish favorite, to your health!