Magical Tri Melon Soup

This soup is August in a bowl. It's a Jane Brody recipe - she credits Gourmet magazine.

Because the mixtures have different densities (apparently something you can do with other types of soups, too), they don't mix when you put them in the bowl.

I added a third and it works perfectly - watermelon chunks  puréed with mint and squeezed lemon juice.

1 cantaloupe, ripe

2 lemons

1 honey dew melon, ripe

2 T. lime juice (or a fresh lime)

1/2 seedless watermelon, cubed

lots of mint

salt and agave to taste

Peel and cube the first melon. This is labor intensive - use a large cutting board. First cut in half, and scoop out the seeds. Cut in 1/8s and then slice each along the curve of the melon, leaving the flesh. Cube and throw in a powerful blender, like the ninja. Or, buy it cubed!

Squeeze in the juice of the lemon and a little salt. Empty into a pitcher.

Repeat with the honey dew, adding mint, lime juice, and salt. You can add a little agave if you like it sweeter.

The watermelon is less dense but will still hold its shape. Same procedure. 

Chill.

To serve, use flat soup bowls. Put a scoop of honey dew to the side of the bowl. Gently pour the cantaloupe into the open space, and also the watermelon. If you're lucky, it will create a crescent shape. So pretty.

Garnish with fresh mint. Do not serve to the Rosen clan. They don't like melons!

Chilled Watermelon Soup

This is a beautiful color, inspired by a watermelon cucumber drink we bought on the street in Split, Croatia - such a gorgeous place.

Seedless watermelon chunks - quantity is flexible
Ginger
Mint
Lemon juice (fresh is best)
Lime juice (bottled is actually more reliable - I bought a bag of limes and they were very dry)
Salt to taste

Optional: buttermilk

The quantities on this are really flexible. A shortcut is to buy cubed, seeded watermelon.

Run it all through a blender. (The blender is better than a food processor).

Chill in a pitcher. Serve with a contrasting melon, chunked, or mint sprigs.

Adding buttermilk makes it really, really delectable.

Rachel Falkove's Fruit Soup

In summer start to crave this cool, frothy soup.  It is way easy.  Abba and I once had a similar breakfast soup at Grossingers, a classic borscht belt hotel.  Grandma Fritzie and Grandpa Sam stayed there once and talked about it for years.  It was famous for its quantity of food, and you could keep ordering things to try from the menu and the waiters kept bringing anything you wanted without having to pay anything additional.  Now it seems wasteful, but that was a generation who had been through the Depression and World War II and it felt like Olam Haba.

This is a half recipe of Rachel's version, to fit in a blender.  You can use the measurement on the blender and save a measuring cup.

2 c. orange/pineapple juice (or plain OJ)
1½ c. buttermilk (lowfat is fine)
½ c. sour cream or yogurt
1½ c. fresh fruit - berries or any chopped fruit you like (blueberries, raspberries, peaches ...)
½ t. agave or honey
Mint for flavor
Mint for garnish

1. Blend all ingredients EXCEPT FRUIT.  A blender works best, but you could do it with a whisk in a soup tureen.
2. Chop fruit into small pieces.  You can add when you prepare, or when you serve.
3. Chill.
4. Garnish with mint.

Strawberry Fruit Smoothie Soup

Northeast Strawberry Season is really quick, but this year - for the first since I've been paying attention - there are lots of berries. They don't last very long but are sweet and juicy. The main labor is hulling them. Just take a sharp paring knife and dig in to pull out the minimum of fruit - the discard will be conical.  Your Grandma Bunny will be standing on your shoulder to make sure you don't waste any berry!!
Aunt Sally has a super easy elegant strawberry dessert. Take two pints of strawberries and hull. Take about 1/4 of the berries and put them in the blender with sugar (to taste, about a ¼ c. or so) and some mint and/or any seasoning you like, added lightly. Blend. Take a really beautiful glass bowl and put in the second pint of strawberries. If they're large, slice in half. Pour the blended mixture over the whole berries and chill. With a little garnish, it is a beautiful presentation, especially if you have nice dessert size bowls.

Here's a quick strawberry smoothie, which when poured in bowls is a great soup. Since the ingredients can be chilled in advance and you don't cook it, it's good if there isn't a lot of time before you serve it.

2 pints strawberries, hulled. If they're gigunda, cut into smaller sections.
2 cups plain yogurt - you can use low fat, it's still really good!
3/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
mint to garnish

In a blender, combine the strawberries, yogurt, orange juice, sugar, and cardamom. Puree until well mixed. Chill and serve. You can just put the blender right in the refridge to chill.

Chilled Spiced Peach Mango Soup - shana tova

This scrumption soup requires advanced planning on two fronts: you need to buy the peaches & mango several days in advance, and you need to make it far enough ahead that it’s really chilled by serving time.  It is light but very flavorful, nice if you'll be having a heavy holiday feast.  I served it for our first Rosh Hashanah dinner at 6622 - peaches are in season for Rosh Hashanah, not just apples.

1/2 cup sliced almonds (alternative: toasted coconut)

1 T olive oil

6 large, ripe peaches - the riper the better [this can take up to a week!]
2 ripe bananas or a large ripe mango, peeled and diced
1⅓ cup orange juice OR grape juice
1 lime OR lime juice
2¾ tbsp honey
2 T Amaretto liqueur or peach brandy or Cointreau
1/2 c. water or more

1¼ tsp  ground ginger OR a t. of fresh grated ginger
¼ tsp  cardamom
¼ tsp  cinnamon

pinch of salt

pinch of cloves 
⅔  cup buttermilk, soy yogurt, or regular yogurt for garnish , optional

Optional garnish: mint sprigs

1.     Put the peaches in a pot or bowl and pour boiling water over them.  Cool enough to touch.  This is an easy way to peel them – if they are really ripe, the peels will slip off.

2.     In small skillet, toast almonds in oil over medium heat, stirring often, until golden, about 3 minutes. Set aside. 

  

4.     In large saucepan, add the peaches and bananas/mangos, squeezing the ripe fruit as you drop it in, so the pulp is mashed. Add orange or grape juice, squeezed lime juice, honey, liqueur, water, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, and pinch of salt and of cloves; bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until peaches are very soft, about 12 minutes. Let cool. 

5.     Using an immersion blender, purée until smooth. Cover and refrigerate until cold, about 4 hours. If it’s very thick, you can add ice cubes to the batch.  I often refrigerate chilled soup in a large glass pitcher - just make sure the ladle will fit through the top.

6.      Ladle into bowls. Drop in a dollop of yogurt or buttermilk, and swirl it to make a design. Sprinkle with toasted almonds, coconut, and mint. This year we used starfruit for the shehecheyanu and it would make a fun garnish.

Source, though I modified the recipe: http://www.canadianliving.com/food/chilled_spiced_peach_soup.php

Chunky Berry Soup, AKA Marak Fruit Roll-Up

This is a luscious summer soup, probably our favorite.  I found the recipe in the Inqy.  Eventually I realized that the strawberries were from Watsonville, CA and that the PA strawberry season is short and precedes the blueberry season.  Now I watch for the strawberries very closely, and with luck, like this year - you can snag strawberries at their end and blueberries at their beginning.
A perfect alternative is to substitute about 3 or 4 peeled, sliced ripe peaches.  You get the same texture and the same spectacular color, and the peach and blueberry season are in tandem here in the mid-Atlantic. I often double this recipe, since leftovers are so good.  Like with gazpacho, it's important to make it early enough so that it can chill for 5-6 hours.

1 pint blueberries, rinsed.  Pull off stems.
1 pint strawberries, hulled and halved or quartered,  **OR** 3 or 4 ripe peeled  peaches
1 c. white grape juice (purple works, too)
1/4 c. lemon juice
1/3 c. water
1 T + 2 t cornstarch
1/4 to 1/2 sugar

If you're using peaches, pour hot or boiling water over them and let them sit a few minutes.  The skins will slide off.
Place blueberries, strawberries or peaches, grape juice and lemon juice into a medium sauce pan, cover.  Bring to a brisk boil over high heat. [If using an induction cooktop, let it boil for 3-4 minutes. It comes to the boil so fast, the berries don't pop.] With a gas oven top, that takes awhile; with our new electric stove, it's really fast.  The only thing that takes any real time in this recipe is slicing the strawberries.

Remove from heat. In a measuring cup, mix the water and cornstarch into a smooth paste and stir it into the berry mixture. Return to heat, and quickly bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  This is the neat part - stir for one minute, and the liquid thickens and glistens.  Sweeten to taste with sugar.

Chill thoroughly - for at least 5 to 6 hours. The color deepens. 

Garnish with chopped fresh mint, sliced fresh fruit.  This is a deep, gorgeous color so serve it in bowls which will show that off!  It is refreshing, beautiful, and the lemon juice gives it a lovely tartness which tingles a bit on the tongue.  MMMMM.  The Fruit Roll-Up moniker came from Tasha, at Zach's bar mitzvah, when we served this.

This is DAT's favorite cold soup. Always makes him happy.

Gazpacho

New technique, 2025: Put the chopped vegetables in the pitcher with some of the V8 and use the immersion blender. It needs extra blending time - it's not as powerful. Saves cleaning up the bigger food processor, and it's a pain to pour from the food processor to the pitcher, so eliminates that step, too.

Gazpacho is basically chopped Israeli-type salad in tomato juice, with some hot sauce and vinegar. Some recipes also call for oil, but I don't usually put it in. You can always add it to each portion. Some recipes call for tomato paste, but my favorite thickener is a ripe avocado, so that also requires advance planning. Or you could put in a dollop of guacamole.

Gazpacho is very forgiving. If you have some vegetables around, like it's tomato season, just put in more tomatoes. Or cucumbers. Below is a suggested list.

The main challenges of making gazpacho are:

1) Thinking ahead. A ripe avocado really adds nice smooth texture.

2) Chill the ingredients, even the pitcher, if you're making it the same day.

3) Lots of chopping.

1 bottle of tomato juice - at least one quart (32 oz)

1 onion

1 cucumber

1 pepper

1 or 2 tomatoes

1 ripe avocado

some carrots

celery (or other vegetables, cilantro is awesome!)

1/4 cup red-wine vinegar

dash of Tabasco or other hot sauce

Chop the softer vegetables in small chunks. Put them in the food processor.

You will need to do this in two batches.

For the cucumbers, peel and slice in half the long way. Halve each of the halves, and then with the point of the knife, slice/scoop out the seeds.

Add some of the tomato juice and process until smooth but with some vegetable flecks/chunks still visible.

Carrots need to be chopped finer or processed longer.

Add the first batch to your pitcher (or tureen if you have one).

Repeat a second time till all your vegetables are chunked and processed. Add to the pitcher and stir. Add the remaining tomato juice, vinegar, Tabasco and any spices you like. Tomato juice is quite salty, so no need for more salt. You could add fresh oregano, dill, parsley - whatever you have around.

Put in the ladle and stir it up.

Chill.

For serving, chopped herbs are nice on top, or a little guacamole. Croutons are a classic garnish.

This amount serves around 8.