Fiddly food: ‘Phew, what a scorcher!’ edition


Cor, hot isn’t it? Yesterday’s predicted temperatures hit me somewhat unprepared (I'd thought the forecast had said 23C and then the man on the breakfast radio said it would be 27C, so that was a surprise), but a survey of the fridge revealed plenty of potential for chilled soup. The great tragedy of chilled soup is, I find, that you really do need to know in the morning that you want it for dinner. Fortunately, this blasted furlough does allow such planning, and the creation of dishes that have stages like ‘chill for 5 hours’. Definitely something I count as ‘fiddly’.

Many children of the 90s, of which I am one, will think of gazpacho when thinking of a cold soup, and when thinking of gazpacho they’ll think of Chris Barrie as Arnold Rimmer in Red Dwarf. It was a very long time after seeing that until I ever had gazpacho, and it was probably in a university canteen, in slightly dubious form. But I knew it’s cold, and probably tomato-based, so I went a-hunting.

The Guardian admonishes that you shouldn’t even contemplate gazpacho it unless you have amazingly ripe tomatoes ready to go. I didn’t, I had most of a carton of passata. I apologise to the Iberian peninsula, but having the other key ingredients (bell pepper, cucumber, bread) to hand, it seemed worth the substitution.

I did pretty much what the recipe said. I’m sure the version(s) I’ve had before weren’t pale and bready, so the inclusion of some stale white loaf was initially a surprise, but it definitely works.


Leftovers version

Having got set on the cold soup bandwagon, I carried on, into slightly more familiar territory: chłodnik, Polish chilled beetroot soup. You might not think of Poland as the home of refreshing summer food, but sometimes it is. Really.

What’s not to love about chłodnik (huhWOD-neek)? Not only is it purple, but the name (which derives from the word for a cold thing) includes my favourite letter: that Polish peculiarity, ł (pronounced like an English ‘w’).

I’ve read various versions of the recipe, some which mandate using only the stalks and leaves of beetroot, and some which include the root itself as well. If you have a veg box or a market or an allotment, then please do use the leaves. Once upon a time, we’d go to Cambridge Sunday market and buy huge bunches of beets from the organic farmers, and turn the leaves into soup the second we got home. We can’t get to any markets now, the supermarket delivers sadly leafless beets, and our hown-grown veg had a run-in with the slugs last week and currently look like this:

Propelling pencil for scale.
It’s going to be a while before we’ll harvest them…

So, for this week’s chłodnik I’ve boiled a few fresh beets in their skins for an hour, let them cool, and then rubbed the skins and gnarly rooty bit off. Then I chopped a celery stalk and a red onion, and fried them gently in oil until soft but not browned. I added two grated cooked beets, two tiny cloves of garlic, a stock cube and some hot water, and simmered the lot for about 15 minutes.

All the pink doesn't help the washing up.

All that was cooled, then put into the fridge. The following day I stirred in yoghurt and soured cream (doubled cream soured with lemon), more water, some ice cubes, lemon juice and seasoning. And then chopped bits and bobs: radishes, fresh cucumber, pickled cucumber, fresh dill (as much dill as you can lay hands on), spring onions. The whole lot was topped with quartered boiled eggs. Oh yes, you also have to remember to boil eggs far enough in advance that they’re cool when you want to eat.

The whole should be well salted, and fairly tart, to offset the earthy tones of the beets.



Comments

  1. Niiiice. Gazpacho is full of things I can't eat, but it's a pleasing concept. And chłodnik is news to me and sounds excellent. Will suggest it to the parents next time a veg box comes up beetroot heavy.

    Also, Red Dwarf references automatically get bonus points. Poor Rimmer.

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