Hot. Soup.

Most of us don't tend to think of soup on days where the temps are reaching mid 90's, but that's exactly what happened for me this week. The Sunday trip to the market unearthed some wonderfulness that screamed to be made into a big bowl of soup.

See, I love soup. I make a lot of it, mostly during the colder months. But, I remembered an amazing chilled soup I had enjoyed, with the company of my mother in law, long ago when I lived in St. Louis. I was out to duplicate it!

The large bunches of beets and raspberries were my start, but I needed to find a "base" recipe. The soup in St. Louis was called "Raspberry Borscht," but it had a lighter consistency than any borscht I had ever had. Enter Nigella Lawson and her "Spiced Pink Soup" recipe. It is a very simple combination of beets, lime, coriander, cumin, scallions, and sour cream, but it wasn't quite what I had in mind. It did, however, give me the base that needed.

I choose to slowly roast the beets instead of boiling, as most seem to do before making a traditional borscht. Chilled them, peeled them and threw them into my food processor with some lime, coriander, orange juice and the berries. Strained the whole thing (to get out the seeds) and added some chicken stock.

The result? The pinkest soup you've ever seen. It was earthy and it grew on you, but it wasn't what your palate expected with that color. Definitely worth the time to make, but will need some fine tuning. The chilled peach soup on the other hand....(coming soon WITH recipe!)