Beyond Gazpacho

Chilled Garden Soups for Summer


Soup. n. (Fr) A liquid food made by cooking meat, vegetables, fish, etc. in milk or water.


Name a cold soup. Most people who can answer at all, say gazpacho. Yet by Webster’s definition, it isn’t really a soup. It’s not cooked and it adds no milk or water. Gazpacho is more like salsa, it’s liquidity usually comes from its own raw juices.


Hot soups were created as a means of preservation, long before refrigeration, and the classic European repertoire of cold soups was built around cooked soups that were chilled by adding cold cream, milk, or ice. Milk and cream work better in cold soups than hot, because cream’s dense complexes of casein and whey proteins coagulate and burn when heated, forming a skin on top of the soup. Remove that hard layer, and you lose many nutrients. Classic cold soups, like vichyssoise, add cold milk or cream just before serving, never while cooking.


Vichyssoise has an authentically ritzy reputation. In 1910, when the Ritz Carlton in New York City opened its first roof garden, chef Louis Diat celebrated by introducing a new soup to Knickerbocker society. He duplicated a dish his mother made, a traditional peasant soup of France, refined it and named it after the French spa. It was served for the first time to the steel magnet Charles Schwab.


While the French have taught the world much about cold soups, from crème de carrotes glacee (iced carrot soup) to consommé madrilène (tomato consommé), many of the best cold “soups” today are made for the moment, like gazpacho, without any cooking. Because they are raw, they are not overwhelmed by fresh herbs, which often overpower a hot soup. Made of the freshest herbs and vegetables in the garden, fresh, raw soups are far more perishable. Like salsas, they’re best served the same day, for many fresh things begin deteriorating the moment they are cut.



If you want a raw cold soups to stand up for a few days in the refrigerator, natural preservatives like vinegar, lemon juice, wine or olive oil can help. It also freshens up a day old raw soup to squeeze a little lemon or lime in it before serving.


We visited three Iowa chefs who enjoy cooling off in the hot weather with chilled spoonfuls of the garden. Two of their favorite recipes for cold soups are cooked, and one is raw. Fortunately, all were willing to share the secrets with us.


Champagne-Melon Martini’s


Owner chef Kim Wolff’s Pepper Sprout restaurant in old downtown Dubuque, was named after the sassy Johnny Cash and June Carter song “Jackson.”


“My friend and I used to sing that song while working in Chicago and we swore we going to own a restaurant someday. It’s got an attitude I like. The friend is gone, but I do have the restaurant now,” she laughed.


Wolff has the right attitude too and Dubuque has responded well to her Midwest cuisine with classic touches. She prepares all her stocks and sauces from scratch and buys local produce whenever possible. Area growers bring their garden harvest to her kitchen door. She gets mixed greens, onions and snow peas from her octogenarian grandfather. A mushroomer from Bellevue brings her morels. Another grows shiitakes and oyster mushrooms for her.


Her soups, for which she is locally famous, are personal family heirlooms. A sister in law grows her squash, an aunt grows her edible flowers and herbs. The local farmers’ market has 3 organic growers. The Fincel’s sweet corn she uses has a reputation that extends far beyond the county line.


Kim wastes nothing, “We utilize the whole food, the trimmings from the peeled vegetables tonight go into the stock tomorrow morning. She rotates several cold soups on her summer menu, including strawberry tarragon, gazpacho with chick peas and leek. But her personal favorite is a champagne and cantaloupe soup with fresh spearmint.


“It’s simple and an almost perfect blend of flavors and one of the best uses ever of spearmint,” she said, with attitude.


Kim Wolff’s Champaign Melon Soup

serves 8-12


3 fresh melons
1 shallot, or green onion
2 bottles Asti Spumante
½ cup chopped spearmint, plus as many sprigs as servings
¼ pint fresh blueberries
Salt and pepper to taste
Sugar or honey are optional


Cut the melon from the rind and puree, in a blender of food processor. Chop the shallots or green onions and add to the puree. Pour the champagne over the puree and let settle about two hours. Add spearmint and blueberries.


Serve in martini glasses with fresh sprigs of spearmint.


Cold Green Metal


Goldsmith Susan Noland has been making one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry art for decades in Des Moines’ Shops at Roosevelt. For years she was the only art outlet in the area. Lately, the shopping center transformed with arty cafes and three new art galleries, including one that is home to several of Noland’s former students from Drake.


The venerable Noland is still the trendsetter and the mistress of metal. In her bamboo and jade bejeweled studio-gallery, we discovered she has a thing or two to teach the trendy café set too. “Gardening and cooking appeal to me the same way that metalwork does. I like to watch things grow, from just the seeds. A certain patience evolves in both activities,” she explained.


Partner Leslie Becker observed that “Gardening, cooking and metalwork are all elemental. Earth, wind, fire and air must be applied to the process and controlled in both cases. Susan‘s work is organic, the flow of metalwork is like the wind, it represents movement through a piece,” she said.


“That is what drew me to flatware and utensils,” Noland said of designs that have landed her works in major national shows, at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City and at the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis.


As if the flavor of her lettuce, pea and tarragon soup were not enough to dazzle us, she presented it with her “Tea Party” set of heart shaped spoons, remindful of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland. Noland also used an abalone bowled sugar dusting spoon and a caviar spoon in which the bowl is an oyster shell with pearls forming.


“I believe in one-of-a-kind creations, this soup can be frozen and served later, but it can’t be recreated, because the ingredients are only just right for a brief season.”


Susan Noland’s Lettuce Pea Soup

Serves 6-10


1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ cup chopped celery
2 heads shredded Boston bibb or Romaine lettuce
2 large peeled and thinly sliced potatoes
5 cups canned chicken broth
4 cups fresh peas
1 teaspoon chervil
½ cup rice milk
Salt and pepper
Garnish:
Sour cream
Fresh peas


Melt butter and add olive oil, celery and lettuce. Simmer 5 minutes. Add broth and bring to boil.


Add potatoes, peas and chervil and cook on a low boil for 20 minutes. Cool slightly. Puree in blender of food processor.


Return to pot, season with salt and pepper to taste. Chill and serve with garnish.


A Garden Workshop


Deborah Wagman is a food industry lifer, having owned restaurants, managed them, consulted for them, photographed them and written about them. In 2002, she opened her first cooking school, in Des Moines’ East Village and became a food editor at Meredith a few years later.



wagman supports locally grown and raised products, including Niman Ranch pork from Thornton and Cleverley Farms organic vegetables from Mingo. An avid gardener, Wagman recommends using Nebraska Wedding heirloom tomatoes in this recipe.



Deborah Wagman’s Corn and Tomato Soup with Fresh Basil

Serves 4-6


2 tablespoons good quality olive oil
2 medium leeks, white part only, finely chopped
6 ripe large tomatoes, seeded and coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 cups corn kernels cut from 3-4 ears of fresh corn
(Reserve cobs and cut them in half lengthwise)
10 leaves fresh basil
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3 ½ cups chicken stock, preferable homemade
sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste


Garnishes:


¼ cup sour cream
garlic croutons
extra leaves of basil


In a large non-reactive pan, sauté leeks in olive oil until softened, for about 5-6 minutes. Add chopped tomatoes and cook until slightly softened, about 3-4 minutes. Sprinkle the flour over all and cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes longer.


Add the corn kernels, the corn cobs, basil leaves, tomato paste and chicken broth. Bring to a simmer, then partially cover pan and allow it to simmer for 30 minutes. Remove from heat and remove the corn cobs.


In a blender or food processor, puree the soup in small batches until smooth. Pour the pureed soup through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl. Season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Cool to room temperature first, then cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.


Ladle the soup into chilled bowls and top with croutons, a spoonful of sour cream and a sprig of fresh basil.