Pamela Adlon reveals how she makes her Better Things Ukrainian borscht soup

The New Yorker

The New Yorker's Rachel Syme obtained a copy of the recipe for the Ukrainian borscht soup that Adlon created with food stylist Eleanor Nieuwenhuis. "On the set of Better Things, most onscreen cooking scenes end with an actual dish that can be distributed to the cast and crew," says Syme. "The borscht scene was filmed months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the show’s dedicated food stylist, Eleanor Nieuwenhuis, recalled that the dish still elicited strong emotions. One of the camera operators, a young Russian woman, said that the soup reminded her of her grandmother, who had recently died. To Nieuwenhuis’s horror, though, neither the camera operator nor the rest of the staff got to taste the borscht: Nieuwenhuis mistook the pot of soup for a 'prop' batch that had been sitting out for hours and threw it all away." Nieuwenhuis adds: “I’ll never forget that soup, because it was the best we’ve ever made, and also because of that heart-wrenching mistake."