Summer in a Bowl! (White Soup)

As a precursor to the "summer in a crust" peach blueberry crostata, we had a very delicious meal that included one of my long time childhood favorites: "white soup" (aka Cucumber soup or white gazpacho). My Mom used to make this when it was really hot out, and we'd sit out and eat it for dinner at the patio table and it all seemed like a giant treat. While I was on vacation, she made it again, and I remembered all over again how awesome it is. So, here is her recipe...

Basically, this is what you need:
1 cucumber- peeled, seeded, chopped
1c sour cream (or, non fat plain yogurt. or, some combo of the two)
1c chicken broth (I would guess veggie broth would work)
1T white vinegar
1/3 clove garlic
salt to taste

Just take it all, throw it in the blender, blend it up, and chill for at least 6 hours (or over night).

Then when you serve it, the fun starts- toppings can be slivered almonds, diced tomatoes, green onions, bacon bits, bell pepper pieces... the sky is the limit! The soup itself has a very cool cucumbery flavor that would probably be amenable to a lot of different type of toppings.

And, here is the glamor shot:

(and, for those budget cookers out there, this would be a good example of how you can make something that looks and tastes really fancy, that you could serve to anyone, out of just a few very budget-friendly ingredients)

Mmmm... summer in a crust!

Oh my, oh my, do we ever have some catching up to do!

I've been busy, and some of it is even documented with photos, but I have been either too busy or too lazy (or too lazy as a result of being too busy) to post anything. So, welcome to the backlog!

First up- in my perusing of the food blogs, I ran across this discussion of crostatas at the Amateur Gourmet, which are basically something like an open faced fruit pie. The open-facedness basically serves to maximize how awesome it looks, plus, gives you a little leeway in the shaping of it because its supposed to be free-form. I immediately knew that my summer was not going to end without me making one. Luckily, I went on vacation to a place with ridiculous amounts of fantastic fruit, a kitchen, and a lot of free time.

I based my recipe on this one as well as the one in the original post. Basically, you make (or you could acquire) a pie crust which you roll out to about 11-12 inches across. Then, you pick your favorite fruit- mine was fresh peaches with fresh blueberries- I let them sit for a bit in some sugar, a sprinkling of flour (to thicken the juice) and lemon zest and juice (because I always like my fruit with lemon juice). Then you kind of pile the fruit in the middle, fold up the edges, and pop in the (preheated) oven!

Let me tell you, this think definitely got a lot of compliments- it somehow managed to look both rustic and yet fancy. (Plus, it was delicious.)

See for yourself...