Cold Soup

It takes minutes to make this sweet soup. Try serving it after a meal rather than before—it’s a wonderful palate cooler after a spicy meal. Or it can be the main event at lunch on a hot summer day, served with blueberry muffins.

A perfect dessert soup to make in July, when melons are at their sweetest. This makes a refreshing finish to a grilled meal.

A collection of vegetarian soups wouldn’t be complete without this Spanish classic. It’s especially delicious topped with Garlic Croutons (page 159).

A quick and easy no-cook soup, this is remarkably refreshing on a hot summer day. It’s best eaten on the same day as it is made, since avocado discolors and does not keep well under refrigeration once peeled. This soup makes a great opener for a Southwestern-style meal of burritos, enchiladas, or the like.

This and the following berry soup are the only fruit soups in this chapter that need a bit of cooking. The wine and spices give it a wonderfully complex flavor.

Enjoy the convergence of strawberries and midsummer berries in a sweetly spiced broth.

With the help of a food processor, this tasty, no-cook soup will be ready to eat in minutes. Serve with stone-ground tortilla chips or warmed flour tortillas.

Think of this no-cook soup as a Thai-flavored gazpacho. It’s best with really lush summer tomatoes. Serve with a cold noodle dish for a quick summer meal.

This refreshing cold soup is one that I often serve to summer company.

Zucchini and corn are an appealing pair. Serve with Garlic Croutons (page 159) to add a pleasant crunch.

This cheerfully colored soup can be the centerpiece of a summer meal, served with crusty bread or sandwiches and a bountiful salad.

A soup that looks and tastes garden-fresh, this is a good one to serve all summer long.

Cheddar-Oat Griddle Biscuits (page 153) provide a nice contrast to the mild flavor of this pleasant summer soup. Or try it with Garlic Croutons (page 159), if you’d prefer a little crunch.

Here’s an exceptionally easy, no-cook soup. This evolved from the classic recipe for Middle Eastern cucumber soup, which is made with a base of yogurt. However, I don’t think it tastes right with soy yogurt, so I tinkered with it until it approximated the original flavor, without the yogurt. I enjoy it with barley added, as suggested in the variation below.

This brightly colored soup makes a delightful introduction to a summer dinner, or it can be the centerpiece of a light meal accompanied by salad-filled wraps.

This is a soup I had years ago at an inn in Peacham, Vermont, when my husband, Evan, and I were looking for recipes for our book on new New England cooking. It is so delectable that every year now I celebrate the coming of the blueberries by making myself this soup. And, of course, I am blessed by having my cousin John tap our maple trees in the spring, so there is always maple syrup in my larder.

This is ideal to make when you’ve bought too much watermelon.

This is really another take on the preceding vegetable soup, but it differs enough in detail to warrant a full-dress recipe. It is without question one of my favorite soups, and I usually plant a couple of rows of leeks in my garden so I can indulge myself at a moment’s notice. This is one soup in which I prefer to use water rather than stock, so that nothing interferes with the sweet, pronounced flavor of the leeks.

These ingredients all strike floral notes and to my mind are a natural combination. Raspberries contribute sweetness; champagne, acidity; rose water, depth of flavor; and the apricots, texture.

I’ve adapted this dessert from one of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s recipes. It starts with his base soup, and I’ve added the tanginess of yogurt and the toasted nuttiness of sesame for depth of flavor and contrasting textures.

Maybe I like rhubarb so much because I started eating it when I was a child; my mother’s strawberry-rhubarb pie is one of my earliest memories. And I love summer fruit soups; that’s something I learned from François Payard. So this combination is a natural for me. You need just the pod from the vanilla bean for this dessert, so if you have saved some used pods, now is the time to recycle. And you will need a whipped cream charger (see page 279) for the foam. You will have leftover consommé (which you can freeze) and foam; you simply can’t successfully foam less liquid than is in the recipe.

Serve this chilled fruit soup as a light summer appetizer or with your favorite sandwich or salad.

Beets and beet soup are as old as the Talmud, in which the dish is mentioned. Borscht, brought to France most recently by Russian immigrants before World War I, is still very popular served either hot or cold, depending on the season. Although there is a meat version, made with veal bones and thickened with eggs and vinegar, I prefer this lighter, dairy beet soup. The French use a bit more vinegar and less sugar than in American recipes, proportions that allow the beet flavor really to shine through. The soup is traditionally topped with dill or chervil, but I use whatever is growing seasonally in my garden, often fresh mint. The combination of the bright-pink beets, the sour cream or yogurt, and the green herbs makes a stunning dish.