August 2000 Letter

COLD SOUPS

Cold soups are one of the rewards of living through a hot summer. They're always a little bit of a surprise, and a real refreshment. How nice it is to dip your spoon into a bowl of icy, creamy cucumber soup, or a chilled sweet melon soup with mint.

I remember the first time I made that cool, green melon soup. Some friends had come for dinner, and we were sitting outside on the terrace, in the waning heat of an August evening.

"Do you want another bowl of soup?" I asked.

"I want another bowl of that soup every evening for the rest of the summer," my friend answered.

These soups have a practical aspect. Any cooking must be done well in advance of the meal, so a soup can be simmered in the early morning hours, before the heat becomes oppressive, then pureed, seasoned, and put away to chill. At dinnertime it's a ready, reviving treat. And many cold soups need no cooking at all.

They're also seductively lovely, perfumed with the ripeness of summer and showing off their tropical or pastel colors. A bowl of chilled peach and nectarine soup with a swirl of cream in it, or a deep magenta raspberry borscht can elevate the simplest meal to something elegant.

With all these nice qualities, most cold soups are simple to make - and they can be made from a remarkable variety of ingredients. Paging through my own three books, I found recipes for cold soups made from cucumber, spinach, dill with a whole assortment of vegetables, avocados, beets, the famous cherry-lemon soup, a buttermilk soup with green onions and potatoes that harks back to my Polish childhood, a plum soup, various gazpachos, and of course the melon soup with mint, the peach and nectarine soup and the raspberry borscht.

Cold soups fall into three main categories. There are vegetable soups which are cooked first. Vichyssoise is the classic among these - the velvety amalgam of potatoes and leeks with sliced chives scattered across its creamy surface. But nearly any vegetable can be cooked, thoroughly pureed, combined with some broth or cream or a spoonful of olive oil, and chilled.

Then there are the uncooked soups. The top ten among these is gazpacho - in its many variations. In fact, it could be the top fifty.

Gazpacho is a tradition in Andalucia, the Spain of olive trees, oranges, whitewashed buildings and lace fans. There are so many versions of it that entire books have been written about it. The best known gazpacho is a familiar combination of summer vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and onions, all run through a blender and enhanced with olive oil, vinegar, garlic and a bit of bread. It's a salad made into a cold soup, and the technique can be applied to any raw vegetables that you would enjoy together. For my current favorite, see this month's "New Recipes".

But the Spanish make gazpacho from everything. I looked at a few other books on my shelf, and I see that Penelope Casas, who writes so beautifully about Spanish food, has recipes for a white gazpacho made with almonds and pine nuts, another made with fava beans, and a green one made with fresh cilantro and parsley. Elizabeth David, without whom no cookbook shelf is complete, puts black olives into hers, and garnishes it with chopped hard-cooked eggs. I'm hoping to expand my own collection of gazpacho recipes soon. My younger son is in Barcelona at the moment, studying Spanish, and I told him I wanted him to bring back saffron, and notes on gazpacho.

The third category of cold soups are the marvelous cold fruit soups of eastern Europe. There is no greater fruit soup than a cold cherry soup, unless it is the cherry-lemon soup, adapted from the Hungarian original. That one takes some work, but it's worth every minute.

Other fruit soups are the easiest of all, requiring no cooking and hardly any prep time. They are first cousins to the blender smoothie. Indeed, some of them are the blender smoothie poured into a bowl and garnished with a sprig of mint.

My favorite is the one made with peaches and nectarines (The New Vegetarian Epicure, page 283). The ripe fruit is peeled, sliced, then blended to a silky smoothness with yogurt, honey, lemon juice, a hint of nutty Marsala, and cinnamon. This is chilled well and served with more honey-sweetened yogurt swirled into each bowl. Mint sprigs are optional. There's probably ten minutes actual work in a soup like this one, and the result is beautiful and mouth-watering. Try it using white peaches and nectarines, and scatter a few raspberries across each bowlful.

Of course these days anything goes, so raw ingredients are mixed with cooked, and vegetables combined with fruits. Why not? The idea is to have something delicious, seasonal, and easy to make, whether it's savory and sharp with garlic, oil and vinegar, or soothing and sweet. Any one of these fine, cold soups will wake you from the torpor of summer.

August 2000 recipe