Chiller Soup

The heat, as it always does this time of year in the South, has turned up. The air is heavy with warm water.

I am not a cold soup person. I’ve ordered gazpacho perhaps three times in my eating career. This past Mother’s Day, my godmother ordered a fabulous pink concoction from La Fourchette: a creamy chilled tomato rosemary soup. This was my attempt at recreating this, now legendary, soup.

The best part, aside from it’s refreshing yet creamy flavors, is you don’t have to turn on a single heat source.

Ingredients

- 2 ½ lbs tomatoes

- 2-3 roughly chopped shallots

- 3 tblsp Italian parsley

- salt

- 1 ½ tblsp honey

- ½ cup lowfat buttermilk

- ¼ cup olive oil

- 1 lime

Directions

Halve the tomatoes, squeezing the seeds out into a medium-grade sieve that you have place over a bowl to catch the tomato juice.

Core the tomatoes (remove the tough ends where the stems used to be) and chop roughly.

Roughly chop the shallots and parsley.

Place the tomatoes, tomato juice, Italian parsley, honey, buttermilk and lime juice into a blender. You may have to do this in batches considering the volume limits of your appliance.

With the blender running add the olive oil. Flavor with salt and pepper.

Place in the refrigerator until chilled.

Enjoy!

(How easy was that?)

As a side note, there are a lot of flavor variations that one can experiment with within the scope of this recipe. Tomatoes are incredibly versatile and pair well with so many herbs and spices you’re sure to find a version that’s just as good, if not better, than this one.