Soup's On Part 1: Chilled Cucumber

So I was going to write a long, depressing, personal post about my late mother because Mother's Day was last Sunday here in the US.  Then I took a nap and I'm feeling a bit more upbeat.  I realized I have a backlog of cooking images. 

"To answer your question: something like that."

Yesterday I made four soups for one meal for my friends and I.  They're very kind to support my cooking experiments because I can feed 8-9 with decent food that's healthy for only 5-7 bucks per person instead of people paying like 15 for greasy Chinese food.  Well on Saturday I saw a documentary from the BBC about diet and they reminded me of something: soups are pretty darn filling.  In fact, they're more filling than their constituent ingredients eaten apart.  That's the part I found most interesting.  So I got inspired to make some healthy soups and test them for myself and all my bros out there trying to lose some pounds for the Summer. 

Course one is the "salad."  I forget how I found this recipe but immediately I was interested.  I LOVE cucumbers.  They're great sliced with pepper and balsamic vinegar.  So refreshing.  So when I saw "cucumber soup" I was intrigued.

Tools needed are: blender or food processor of some sort, a large pot.  The basic ingredients are:

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 4 cups peeled, seeded and thinly sliced cucumbers
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
• 1 avocado, diced
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, plus more for garnish
• 1/2 cup low-fat plain yogurt ( I used non-fat Greek, which added some nice sourness to it)

I doubled the recipe to make enough for a group of ~8.  Oh and it took 7 good sized cucumbers to give me 8 cups, you might want reserve some from cooking as garnish.

Gotta make sure to get those seeds out

 

I think this is only halfway done.

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and onion; cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, 1-4 minutes. Add lemon juice and cook for 1 minute. Add cucumber slices, broth, salt, pepper and cayenne; bring to a simmer. Reduce heat and cook at a gentle simmer until the cucumbers are soft, 6-8 minutes.

Then add it to the parsley and avocado in a blender.  Remember to be careful when blending hot ingredients, they will explode if very hot or blended on high.  Once it's all well blended add in the yogurt and blend/stir it in. 

Yeah I love parsley.

As the name suggests, I served it cold because it made more...sense?  It was a very pleasant and refreshing dish with a unique sourness from the green and yogurt.  It kind of reminded me of a sweeter and milder Tzatziki sauce-probably because of the Greek yogurt.  If you want to be fancy you can put some parsley leaf and chopped cucumber on top before serving.