Céklaleves

Shredded beetroot, thinly sliced onion and a little bit of oil.

replace oil with bacon fat
add apple cider vinegar, bit of brown sugar

Sautéed.

I need to cook with beet roots more. Such pretty colors.

Watered.

Reduced back out, then re-added more water and reduced back out again. Now reconstituted mushrooms.

More water.

Reduced back out again.

Mushroom stock.

Boiling.

Parsley and dill.

Bowled up with pickled eggs and more herbs. Also a little vinegar.
Light dinner because I had a pretty heavy lunch.

>bacon fat
Nah, I didn't want anything heavy this time.

>vinegar
see >sugar
Not a fan.

It really is wonderful.

Question : why the repeated adding and removing water at the beginning?

i don't think they actually 'removed' any water, but cooked it until the water evaporated.

As someone who absolutely adores everything beats... I must thank you.

Thanks for the step by step OP, gonna give this a shot this week.

Exactly this: You do it because it softens the onion and beetroot and allows them to sweeten (not quite caramelise, but about halfway there) more easily.

Music's the shit.

Welcome. If you can't find dried mushrooms to make mushroom stock with, you can use fresh mushrooms and beef stock or veg stock instead. Don't use white button mushrooms, though, as they're flavourless. If you can find fresh porcini/penny buns where you live, those are best, followed surprisingly closely by fresh shiitake and pic related (oyster mushrooms) third.

Does pan frying beetroot make it taste like something other than overly bitter, overly sweet trash?

Is the beetroot boiled first or is it raw?

I don't find it bitter at all. Tastes like sweet, earthy/peaty carrot to me. Actually, when I had red carrots, they tasted like carroty beetroot, so perhaps there's something to the colour and the taste. I don't know. I'm not a botanist and I've never had any sort of beetroot other than red ones.

Anyway, maybe you just don't like beetroot. That's fine. What do you like?

Completely raw. It's mounded like that in the OP because after I grated it, I put it into a sandwich-baggy-lined bowl as I rinsed the grater.

Is this borscht?

Not quite. It's céklaleves, which differs from borscht in a few ways.
For one, it's not as sour because it's a quick dish and not one that's allowed to ferment.
For another, it's thin because there's no roux used in preparing it.
Third, it has no carrots and uses way more beetroot (I used a 500g or so beetroot for a single serving).
Finally, céklaleves is always vegetarian friendly and, if you do it with lemon juice or vinegar instead of yogurt or strained soured cream, and omit the pickled eggs, it's vegan.