Food for Thought with Suzanne Dunaway

Two cold summer soups

1. Corn soup

I love this recipe in summer, along with gazpacho and the cold zucchine soup inspired by a man we know who loves to get in the kitchen and create good tastes with summer vegetables.

If you can find frozen fresh corn kernels, use them, or strip fresh corn from the cob with a serrated knife, pressing out all of the corn from the residual cob. Or use the lovely organic canned kernels found in France, which make a perfectly lovely soup, especially when put through a sieve and chilled, then dolled up with a dash of cream, crème fraiche or yogurt when served.

Here in France, fresh corn on the cob is not the easiest vegetable to find, but there are also the vacuum-packed corn cobs found in most supermarkets and they work beautifully, too.

Wherever you find your corn, you will love this soup for a summer dish, and you don’t have to gnaw on cobs and get butter and corn all over your face!

Recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients

Soup

• ¼ cup olive oil
• 2 teaspoons butter
• 1 medium sweet onion, chopped fine
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 cups broth, vegetable or chicken, or plain water but you must cook the soup longer to get more flavor from the kernels
• Sprig of fresh thyme or a couple of pinches of dry thyme
• Salt and pepper
• Juice of a lime

Garnish:

• 1 ripe avocado
• 1 sprig of fresh cilantro, minced

Method

In a soup pot, heat the oil and sauté onion, garlic and kernels for a few minutes until onions wilt. Add the broth, thyme, salt and pepper and thyme and simmer for 20 minutes.

Using a hand mixer, whip the soup into a smooth texture and add the lime juice. At this point you can chill the soup and serve with chopped avocado and a sprinkle of cilantro, or, to refine the soup, pour it into a strainer and with a wire whisk, stir it through the strainer until hardly anything is left of the pulp in the soup. This residue tastes wonderful and can be used in a vegetable soup or frittata, but my golden palate husband prefers the chewy soup!

Keeps for up to 4 days in the fridge.

2. Cold tomato soup

Well, my tomates looked beautiful until the heat wave nudged every one of them to split! Into a soup they went and now we have our vitamins each day with a lovely cup of cold tomato soup, some days with a dollop of Greek yogurt and some days with fromage frais stirred in and some days, a little dusting of parmesan.

This has to be the easiest summer dish of all.

Recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients

• Olive oil to cover the bottom of a saucepan
• 6 ripe tomatoes
• A small sweet onion
• Salt and pepper
• A sprig of fresh basil

Method

Chop everything coarse and simmer the ingredients about 15 minutes.

Let cool and purée with a hand mixer.

Refrigerate and sip.

You may also strain the soup to achieve a silky texture for an elegant presentation.

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