Summer Soup—again

           

The Fourth of July has thrown my schedule all off, so here it is Saturday night, and I’m just posting last Thursday’s Gourmet on a Hot Plate blog. Hope you had a pleasant Forth—Sophie and I spent it quietly at home. She is terribly spooked by thunder but not so much so by fireworks. Still, I hated to leave her home alone—and truth be told I didn’t have any better invitations.

So I stayed home and fixed myself summer soup and a big salad. I know I just posted about a wonderful cold soup I’d newly discovered, but this time it is an old favorite that I rejuvenated. I love a good thick split pea soup in the winter, but I also love a lighter spring pea soup once the weather turns warm. I cut the original recipe down to serve two—which gave me a hearty soup supper for two nights.

Spring pea soup

½ white onion, diced fine

1 clove garlic, diced

1 small stalk celery

¼ tsp. Celery salt

A pinch or more of dried thyme, according to taste.

1 small to medium potato, peeled and cubed

1/2 package frozen petit peas

2 cups chicken broth

Sauté onion, garlic, and celery, celery salt, and thyme in a bit of olive oil until vegetables soften but are not browned. Add potato and peas to skillet and cover mixture with chicken broth. Simmer until potato is soft. Remove from heat, and let it cool a bit.

Puree mixture. You can either do this is a small food processor or in with an immersion blender. Mixture should not be thick—if it is, it will stick and clog the immersion blender (trust me, I found out the hard way). Simply add more broth. When mixture is fairly smooth—a few whole peas just add interest—season with salt and pepper

Serve chilled with a dollop of good Greek yogurt in the middle. Also garnish with finely chopped parsley or sliced scallions if you wish.

Cold summer soups

            Once the weather turns hot, there’s little better for a light supper than a cold soup followed by a salad. The choices are endless—spring pea soup, watercress, gazpacho, white gazpacho, cucumber, avocado, zucchini. I once had a recipe for cold corn soup with bourbon—wish I could find it again. Sometimes soups are fruit-based—peach or watermelon come to mind.

Cold soup always makes me think of my former mother-in-law. She came from Romania as a very young child and lived all her life in the Bronx, only venturing to Texas a few times to visit her son, then my husband. Once we took her to one of Fort Worth’s upscale restaurants—this was in the early seventies and there were only two, maybe three such places in addition to private clubs. Vichyssoise was on the menu, and Joel asked his mom if she’d like some. She said she didn’t know what it was, and he inelegantly replied, “Cold potato soup, Ma.” Her eyes got wide, and there was horror in her voice when she answered, “Could potato soup? I couldn’t.” And she didn’t.

Recently I found a recipe for okroshka, a traditional Russian cold soup of vegetables and a cooked meat in a base that was, historically, something called kvass, a nonalcoholic beverage made from fermented black or rye bread. The meat could be beef, veal, sausage or ham. Sometimes the soup was garnished with sour cream. Later versions used kefir, a fermented milk beverage like a thing yogurt, and there lies the foundation for today’s updated version of this soup.

My version used buttermilk and Greek yogurt (plain, full fat) diluted with a bit of water as the base. I made half the original recipe, served it to one guest, and happily ate leftovers for almost a week. It’s one of those things you kind of always want to keep in the fridge for those summer moments when hunger strikes and you want something that doesn’t require cooking.

For timid eaters, who might be put off by okroshka, you can always call it cold cucumber soup.

Cold cucumber soup (serves two with lots left over—or at least six at one seating)

Dice and combine in a large bowl:

1 medium Yukon Gold potato, boiled, cooled, peeled and diced

2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and diced

1 small cucumber, peeled and diced

1 cup diced meat (I used chicken, but I think ham would also be good; beef might be too heavy)

4 radishes, cleaned and sliced thin

3 green onions, sliced

In a separate bowl, mix:

2 cups plain Greek yogurt

2 cups buttermilk

2 cups cold water

1 lemon or lime, scrubbed and sliced thin

½ tsp. Kosher salt

You can just as easily use 4 cups yogurt or 4 cups buttermilk or kefir if you can find it in a specialty market. I liked the mixture          lot.

Pour the liquid mixture over the vegetables. Stir and chill before serving. At serving, garnish with chopped parsley if you like.

            Summertime, and the livin’ is easy! Enjoy!