Cold Soup

It’s the surprising combination of sweet, tart, creamy, and crunchy additions that makes me crave this summery soup. This gazpacho is all about the garnishes.

With a few choice ingredients and just minutes, you’ve got a substantial soup for a summer day. Choose a crisp, flavorful cucumber with pale green (rather than watery white) flesh for optimal flavor. If the cucumber is organic and unwaxed, leave the peel on for extra fiber and flavor. If you have more time, cover and refrigerate the soup for an hour or more before serving.

I love making cool, refreshing soups that need no cooking at all on hot summer days. This one is nothing like the classic Indian soup of the same name, but it has a personality all its own. For best results, use the most flavorful, lush summer tomatoes available.

This chilled soup always makes me imagine what summer in Eden must have been like: silky, verdant, bright, and refreshing. My only other need would be a glass of cava or vinho verde to go with it. The quality of your avocados is key to this recipe. Try to find the Haas or Bacon varieties from a domestic grower—the Fuerte ones from Chile (which are common in supermarkets) are too watery.

This is one of our deli’s best-selling items in the summer. Two cups may seem like a lot of oil, but the soup really doesn’t have the same rich flavor with any less (we’ve tried). You can, of course, reduce the amount if you like. You can also use any combination of Roma and heirloom tomatoes.

At the 2001 Workshop, Chef Ken Vedrinski astonished guests with a “consommé” made from the strained juice of tomatoes and watermelon. Preparing the dish involved hanging the pureed fruits in a muslin bag overnight to collect the clear, sweet juices—a procedure that might deter many home cooks. Riffing on Chef Vedrinski’s idea, Brian created an easier gazpacho that blends tomato, watermelon, and other summer vegetables so seamlessly that you can’t decipher the contents. The result is a refreshing and original adaptation of the familiar Spanish soup.

Charlie makes this refreshing soup when tomatoes are at their peak of ripeness and flavor. The same method can be applied to extract flavor from other watery vegetables and fruits, such as cucumber and watermelon.

Avocado gives this dairy-free soup its creamy texture. For a super-sophisticated presentation, serve it in chilled martini glasses and garnish each one with a drizzle of Mexican crema or crème fraîche. If you prefer a soup with a thinner consistency, add water until it’s exactly the way you like it.

This caribbean-inspired sweet potato soup is always appropriate in hot weather and makes an unusual starter for a meal off the grill. Serve it hot or cold; by all means chill it in warm weather, but remember it in winter. Whether you’re reheating it or serving it cold, make the soup as far in advance as you like, up to a couple of days. If you’re so inclined, you can make this soup even richer and sweeter by using half chicken stock and half canned coconut milk.

Leftover Broccoli—maybe that you boiled or steamed as a simple side dish—is a super candidate for this soup. (You may even find yourself making more broccoli than you can eat, as I do, specifically so you can turn it into this soup the next day.) To use leftovers, rinse off any remnants of dressing with hot water, add it to the pan after you’ve cooked away the garlic’s raw taste, and proceed without any additional cooking.

In its traditional form, this cold potato-and-leek soup borders on boring: potatoes, leeks (or onions or a combination), water or stock, salt and pepper, butter, and cream. What little complexity the soup has comes from butter, lots of salt and pepper, good stock, and, of course, cream. But if you add other vegetables, like garlic and carrots, things become more interesting. And you can nudge the soup over into gazpacho territory by adding a tomato to the mix, along with basil. Some protein, like shrimp, can turn it into more of a whole-meal soup.

Most of the time spent making soups like this one and the preceding Asian-Style Cucumber Soup goes to chilling: refrigerate the cucumbers as their moisture is drawn out; refrigerate the stock, yogurt, or sour cream that is their base; and, if time allows, refrigerate the soup itself so you can serve it not cool but really cold. And remember, the lively flavor of these derives largely from a load of herbs—vary them to your heart’s content, but don’t leave them out.

This Soup is on the thin, almost drinkable, side. If that doesn’t appeal to you, use sour cream, perhaps a bit more than the quantity recommended here, or throw a peeled, diced potato in with the peas, which will give the final soup quite a bit of heft.

I like gazpacho, but the ultimate minimalist version—take a few tomatoes, a red pepper, some onion, oil, and vinegar, and whiz it in a blender—doesn’t always cut it for me. When I confessed this to my friend and sometime co-author Jean-Georges Vongerichten, he suggested I abandon tradition entirely and combine tomatoes with another fruit of the season: cantaloupe. These, combined with basil and lemon—in place of vinegar—produce the mildest, most delicious, creamiest gazpacho I’ve ever tasted. Make sure to use ripe cantaloupe and tomato at the height of the summer for the best results.

For years I was stuck on blended or cooked cucumber soups, until I was served a clear, chunky, ice-cold soup laced with soy and with the sour-sweet-salty-spicy combination characteristic of so much Southeast Asian cooking. After I duplicated that, it occurred to me to make a similar preparation with nam pla (fish sauce) and coconut milk, an equally spicy but wonderfully creamy concoction. I know I’ll never use either the blender or the stove to make cucumber soup again.

Good tomatoes are bursting with potential. The difference between consuming a tomato out of hand and slicing it, then sprinkling it with a pinch of salt and a few drops of olive oil, is the difference between a snack and a dish. And the great thing about tomatoes is that it takes so little to convert them from one to the other. In this instance—though not always—peeling and seeding the tomatoes is worth the effort. To do so, bring a pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, cut a small X on the smooth (flower) end of each tomato. Drop them into the boiling water. In about thirty seconds, you’ll see the skin begin to loosen. Immediately remove from the boiling water and plunge into a bowl of ice water. When they’re cool, peel, then cut them in half through their equator. Squeeze and shake out the seeds. (For best flavor, do this over a strainer and recombine the reserved juices with the pulp.) Use fresh thyme (1 teaspoon), dill (1 tablespoon), basil (1/4 cup), parsley (1/4 cup), chervil (1 tablespoon), chives (1/4 cup), or a mixture of herbs to make this even better; garnish with fresh herbs, too, if you like.

Here’s an unusual dish: a grand cold soup that is essentially a whole meal. (You might, if you have the inclination and want to be wholly authentic, serve with Kong Namul, page 182; Black Beans with Soy, page 432; or other panchan.) Pickle the cucumber and daikon in advance if you can or substitute kimchi. Though this dish contains some chiles, it is not meant to be blazing hot, so use mild long red chiles if you can find them or the more common long green (Italian frying, or Anaheim) peppers.

Mangoes abound not only in the Caribbean but also, these days, in the United States. When they’re cheap (in Latin markets they’re often four for a dollar) there is no better use for them than this sweet soup, which can be served as an appetizer, especially in hot weather (or for dessert; see the variation). It’s also lovely at Sunday brunch.

This creamy soup is wonderful on hot days; pair it with tortilla chips and you have a great lunch. Unlike most avocado soups, which are cream based, this one features the sweetness of tomatoes and the bite of chiles. You can make this into a dip by adding another avocado or two and reducing the amount of stock to just enough to allow the mixture to be pureed. A nice touch is to use a third avocado, diced, as a garnish.

Ignacio Blanco is a friend from Galicia, the northwestern corner of Spain. He taught me this delicious (and, yes, traditional, though it is cooked) gazpacho. Best made in August, when all these vegetables are at their peak.

Having eaten countless dishes called gazpacho—both in and out of Spain—I feel less an authority than anyone to define it. Some people would have you believe that all gazpachos contain soaked bread, and indeed many do. Some say it must have vinegar; but I’ve been served plenty of good cold soups called gazpacho that were barely acidic. Others call any cold, drinkable soup that meets the need for both food and drink gazpacho. (A chilled can of crushed tomatoes would meet this definition and, with parsley and garlic, wouldn’t be too bad on a hot day.) I do have a few rules of my own for gazpacho: First, try to avoid green bell pepper. Even if it looks nice, this under ripe fruit adds crunch at the price of bitterness; use red or yellow peppers instead. Second, the raw flavors of uncooked gazpacho really do seem to mellow when you allow them to meld for a few hours or even overnight; while not essential, this is a nice touch. And finally, sherry vinegar (or high-quality wine vinegar) is preferable to balsamic vinegar in gazpacho; not only is it more authentic, but its cleaner flavor provides better balance. See the next recipe for a more complex version of this classic. Or add some cumin or paprika to this one, use tomato or V-8 juice in place of the water, and add fresh herbs—especially basil—as you find them.

Borscht, like gazpacho, is difficult to define; there are more versions than you can count. But at least we know they all (or almost all, anyway) contain beets (it’s likely that the word borscht comes from the same root as the word for beet). And usually borscht is served cold. But it can be a vegetarian affair or a big meaty stew. The vegetarian version is usually served cold, while the beefy version is usually a hot winter dish. Here’s a fairly simple cold borscht with hot potatoes, a style I have made for thirty years (and first ate, at my grandmother’s table, before that). For a meaty borscht, see page 148.

Few things are more uplifting in the dead of winter than a bowl of this bright orange soup, which is equally good served cold in the summer. Don’t overcook the carrots or you’ll lose the beautiful color. This soup can be made ahead of time and refrigerated, then reheated if necessary.

In the States, cream soup usually conjures up images of thick, starchy soup with canned vegetables. But real cream soup, as made in France, is relatively thin, super-smooth, and fragrant with fresh vegetables and herbs. For convenience, you might prepare the vegetable puree ahead of time and refrigerate it; you can then finish the soup right before serving. Note that Vichyssoise, cold leek and potato soup, the variation that follows, is a direct descendant.