chilled cucumber soup

chilled cucumber soup

After my huge pot of borscht, I am a big fan of the cold soup. It is cool and refreshing and filling; the perfect thing for the oppressive heat wave that has kept wrapped New York in its hot little hands for all of this month.

This cucumber soup came about after one of our recent CSA shares included three cucumbers of tremendous proportions. I'm generally not crazy about cucumbers, but I liked the idea of turning them into a light, chilled, creamy soup.

I very loosely adapted my soup from this Emeril Lagasse recipe. I had my three gigandor cukes, a large fresh food co-op onion, a scallion, and a sizable handful each of parsley and cilantro. I chopped that stuff coarsely, and then threw it in the blender. I was worried about pureeing all that food, but I needn't have been. This was really easy to make because Laura's parents bought her an incredibly kick ass blender for Christmas. It pureed everything to perfection. I barely had to chop anything at all; it was great.


cucumber soup with a sprig of parsley

Then I scooped in about half a container of sour cream and probably an equal amount of plain yogurt. For spice I added a fair amount of salt and pepper, some of my cucumber dill mix, dried chili powder, cumin, garlic powder and I think oregano. For acidity, I put in the juice of half a lemon, although I'm sure lime would be awesome too. I blended again to combine, and then ate it right away. All the ingredients save the spices were straight from the fridge, so it was reasonably cold to start with. It was more chilled after a night in the fridge, and the flavors stronger and brighter, but it was good immediately after its tumultuous journey through the blender, served with a juicy steak and white rice.


a cool and refreshing summer meal

Speaking of cucumbers, I'm finding they have a fairly short shelf life. In general, I haven't had to toss much of my food co-op veggies out. I mean, sure, when I'm eating salad or greens in the later part of the week, some of them will be a little bruised or wilted, but only the worst of them get tossed in the trash. So far, I've wasted very little of my produce, but cucumbers have been the exception. I've had a couple of them turn to absolute mush in a plastic bag in the fridge. Any storage tips? Or exciting recipes that I will want to make immediately, thus avoiding the problem altogether?