The Benefits of Buttermilk: Summer Buttermilk Soup

Buttermilk makes you beautiful.

So they say.

I once read that Mark Antony fell in love with Cleopatra because she had silky, radiant skin -- thanks to baths in buttermilk. And that Scarlett O’Hara apparently used buttermilk on her face to get rid of her freckles.

Me? Silky and radiant? Not lately (if ever).

Also I have too many freckles to even contemplate rubbing them out. Also, I think freckles are cute.

So no, for me buttermilk isn’t about its beauty functions.

It’s about food.

No surprise there, right?

You heard it here: buttermilk makes a lot of food better, more delicious, more perfect in texture.

Buttermilk makes one of the tastiest, most satisfying, most thirst-quenching drinks (lassis).

It adds a whole new dimension to ordinary cole slaw.

Want moist, tender muffins, scones and pancakes? Make them with buttermilk. Ditto Cake! Pie! Even pudding!

And especially, at this time of year: make satisfyingly creamy, low-fat, low-calorie summer soups like this one, based on cucumbers.

Cold Cucumber-Buttermilk Soup

• 2 medium cucumbers

• salt

• 1 stalk celery, peeled and chopped

• 2 scallions, chopped

• 1 clove garlic

• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh chili pepper, optional

• 1 cup buttermilk

• 1/2 cup plain yogurt

• 3 tablespoons lemon juice

• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley

• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

• Aleppo pepper (or use freshly ground black pepper)

Peel the cucumbers, slice them in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Sprinkle the cucumbers with salt and let them stand for 30 minutes. Wipe the cucumbers with paper towels. Chop the cucumbers into coarse chunks and place in a blender or food processor. Add the celery, scallions, garlic and chili pepper, if used, and process to mince them. Add the buttermilk, yogurt, lemon juice, parsley and dill (use a large bowl and whisk if your blender or processor isn’t large enough) and process until well blended. Season to taste with salt and either Aleppo or black pepper. Chill thoroughly before serving.

Makes 4-6 servings

Spinach Vichyssoise

I had a fancy dinner planned for Saturday evening, meaning drinks and hors d’oeuvres and a few courses, mostly experiment recipes, for our good friends Susan and Richard. They are among my “regular” tasters and every once in a while I invite them to “review” some of the latest creations.

They are good sports.

I cooked a couple of the do-ahead items, including Spinach Vichyssoise intended to be served as “shots” with our cocktails, and was ready to get in my car to shop for the other ingredients when, unfortunately, I realized I had done something to my knee and it felt weird and I had trouble walking. When I looked down at it, it was three times its usual size and my leg looked like there was a boulder attached.

So much for working out.

After a half day on the couch, ice-on, ice-off it wasn’t any better so Ed took me to the ER, where an orthopedist told me to stay on the couch, ice-on, ice-off for a few more days.

Dinner was cancelled, naturally. 

But Susan and Richard told us to come on over for dinner, which we did, me hobbling into the car with my ice pack wrapped in a towel and with my father’s cane, which Ed and I bought for him once, a long time ago in London, and has a cobra head for a handle.

Susan and Richard are good people. I am grateful to have them as friends.

I’ll do that dinner some other time, with different recipes. As for the food I prepared, my daughter Gillian, son-in-law Jesse and their three kids came for a visit Sunday and became the tasters. They ate the frittata that I was going to cut up and serve on baguette slices — more on that in a few days. They ate some carrot soup and also the Spinach Vichyssoise, not in aperitif glasses, but in bowls, like regular soup, because it’s good that way too.

It’s a good make-ahead dish and equally wonderful whether you serve it cold or hot.

Spinach Vichyssoise

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 large all-purpose potatoes, peeled and chopped

1 large yellow onion, chopped

2 large leeks, cleaned and chopped

2 carrots, chopped

1 small Serrano pepper, deseeded and chopped (or other chili pepper)

5 cups vegetable stock

1 medium bunch spinach, wash, drained and coarsely chopped

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 cup coconut milk

Heat the olive oil in a soup pot. Add the potatoes, onion, leeks, carrots and Serrano pepper and cook them over medium heat for 5-6 minutes, stirring often, until the vegetables have softened. Add the stock. Bring the soup to a boil. Lower the heat, cover the pan and cook for about 15 minutes. Add the spinach, season to taste with salt and pepper, cover the pan and cook for another 10 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Puree the soup in a blender or food processor and return the soup to the pan. Stir in the coconut milk and heat through. OR, refrigerate and serve chilled.

Makes 8 servings

Mango Soup with Mint and Chili Pepper

I used to test kitchen appliances and write about them for various magazines, so I learned a lot about what to look for and about the best uses for the tools we buy for our kitchens. Also some history as to why or how they got invented.

Like the Blender. We take it for granted these days, but it was the first real “modern” kitchen tool. It began as barware back in the 1930s, designed to blend the likes of cocktails like Daiquiris and Brandy Alexanders.

But in the 1950s, when the real housewives of America got hold of it, they quickly understood how useful it could be in the kitchen.

Women’s lib. At least when it came to chopping, blending and pureeing ingredients. 

Among the first “blender recipes” were cold soups. It was so easy — put cut up soft fruit or vegetables in a blender, add liquid and seasonings and puree away.

The process isn’t much different today, except now we have immersion blenders and food processors also.

What is different now is that we now have a zillion more ingredients that women back in the 50s probably never heard of or would think to use because they were unavailable or outside their cultural comfort zone. Like yogurt. Mango. Avocado. Chili peppers. Ingredients that are now as commonplace as apples and milk and packaged bread.

I recently had a few too many mangoes so I decided to get out my trusty old blender and give it a whirl for cold fruit soup. It was as reliable as ever. The soup took just a few minutes to prepare and it was incredibly refreshing.

It’s a perfect dish on a hot, hot, humid day.

If you make this soup in advance and store it in the fridge, take it out about a half hour before you serve it. Fruit soups are best when chilled but not utterly cold.

Mango Soup with Mint and Chili Pepper

2 large mangoes, about 2 pounds

1 cup milk, approximately

1 cup plain Greek style yogurt

1 small Serrano pepper, about 1 teaspoon finely chopped

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

juice of half a lime

salt to taste

gratings of nutmeg

Peel the mango and cut the flesh into chunks. Place the mango, milk, yogurt, Serrano pepper, honey, mint and lime juice in a food processor or blender (or use a deep vessel and hand blender) and puree the ingredients. Season to taste with salt. Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled. Garnish with a few sprinkles of freshly grated nutmeg and mint sprigs. If the soup seems too thick, stir in enough milk to achieve the desired consistency. Makes 4 servings

Gazpacho, World Cup Winner

Doesn’t matter who you’re rooting for in the World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands. Gazpacho is a Spanish soup but it’s an all around winner and almost everyone loves it, so it’s a good dish to serve to friends who might be watching the game with you Sunday.

The first time I ever tried Gazpacho was right after my brother Jeff and sister-in-law Eileen returned from their honeymoon in Spain and they invited the family over for dinner. Eileen, who’s good at lots of stuff, will be the first to admit that she’s not such a great cook. But she was determined to make Gazpacho for us.

It took her seven hours, not including the shopping. In her effort to make the dish the authentic way, she traveled to a distant neighborhood to find perfect produce from a Spanish market, hand-chopped the vegetables rather than use a food processor and ground the bread and herbs using a mortar and pestle that she borrowed from her grandmother. 

The soup was fabulous. Plump, ripe, fruity summer tomatoes. Crunchy bell peppers. Icy-crisp sweet cucumbers. Homemade, well-seasoned croutons.

She never made it again. And once we heard how long it took her no one asked for the recipe. Who would bother??

A few years ago, for a food column, I played around with Eileen’s recipe. I wanted readers to be able to make this recipe — the easy way. It still requires several steps, but it won’t take you seven hours to make. Here’s the modern, still-tasting-authentic version. You might have to do this in portions, depending on the size of your food processor.

Food Processor Andalusian Gazpacho

The Soup:

5 ripe tomatoes

1 cucumber

1 green bell pepper

4 slices homestyle white bread, torn into small pieces

2 large cloves garlic

1 medium onion, cut into chunks

5 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup water

salt to taste

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

3 cups tomato juice

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil or oregano

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

freshly ground black pepper to taste

Croutons (or use packaged):

4 slices homestyle white bread

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

salt to taste

Garnish:

chopped green bell pepper, scallions, cucumber and fresh chili pepper

To make the soup, cut the tomatoes in half, crosswise and squeeze out the seeds. Chop the tomatoes and set aside. Peel the cucumber, cut in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Chop the cucumber and set aside. Remove the stem and top of the bell pepper, cut in half and remove the seeds and pith. Chop the pepper and set aside. Place the bread, garlic cloves, onion and olive oil in a food processor. Process until finely minced. Scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice during the process. Add the water and a shake of salt and process for a few seconds. Add the tomatoes, cucumber and bell pepper and process to the desired consistency. Pour into a large bowl and add the wine vinegar, tomato juice, basil or oregano and parsley. Refrigerate for at least one hour to let flavors blend. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve soup topped with croutons and garnish on the side. Makes 6 servings

To make croutons: trim the crusts from the bread and dice the slices. Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the bread. Sprinkle with basil and salt to taste. Cook, tossing the bread occasionally, for several minutes until the dice are toasty brown. Dish out and set aside.

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