Borscht with Pickled Mushrooms and Cucumbers

Some of the greatest Russian dishes are the soups like botvinia, okroshka, and chilled beet soup, especially when served with hot little meat pastries called piroshki. The soups contain sour elements like pickles, sorrel, lemon, dill, and horseradish, all very cooling in the summer. The soup plates in the photograph are the ones in which my aunt used to serve this violently colored soup, each thin crystal plate filled with a chunk of ice, and as you ate it, the spoon and the i