Chilled Green Soup

Hello,

Today I am going to show you a super easy recipe ideal for hot summer days. The name is totally silly, I agree, but the ingredients used are quite balanced and I could not pick any of them to be more characteristic than the other flavorwise.

Anyway, it is definitely green and can be a lifesafer dish for two reasons, it is easy to make yet truly refreshing.

We eat lots of soup, no weekend meal is considered complete without a soup as a starter. Now that I am still working in home office, my kids tend to think that the same applies to weekday lunches, so it is a good thing to have a few recipes on hand that are quick to make. What's more, this soup requires no cooking, you only need to clean the veggies, toast the seeds, blend and refrigerate.

Let's start!

Ingredients:

Soup:

• 2 mid-sized cucumber (about 400 g altogether)
• 150 g baby spinach
• 1 large spring onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 50 g almond flakes
• 40 g sunflower seeds
• 80 g fresh peas
• a bunch of parsley
• a bunch of basil
• 2 sprigs of mint
• 130 g sour cream / greek yogurt
• salt, pepper, cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• water

Topping (totally optional):

• fresh goat cheese
• toasted almond flakes and sunflower seeds
• greens of your choice (I used rocket, nasturtium and beet leaves)
• edible flowers of your choice (I used borage, violet, rose)

Tools:

• chopping board
• knife
• strainer
• pan
• blender

I know it was supposed to be a no-cook recipe, but toasting the nuts that go into the soup makes a big difference as it brings out that oily nutty flavor, and it's kind of effortless to do.

Put the nuts into a pan (no oil needed) and toast them on medium - high heat until they get sligthly brown.

Let it cool to room temperature and save about 1/4 of them to serve as topping for the soup.

Wash the baby spinach, drain and remove the larger stems.

Wash the herbs, pasley is OK as is, but I prefer to remove the basil and mint leaves from the stems,

Discard the stems.

Wash the spring onion.

Peel the cucumbers (sometimes they are a little bitter unpeeled and we would want to avoid that), and chop them.

Dump everything into the blender and blend until smooth. I did not put the quantity of water among the ingredients on purpose. I used about half a liter, but you may adjust the quantity to how dense you like to eat the soup. I suggest to start with 300 ml and continue adding little by little until the desired consistency is reached.

Keep in the fridge until served. Garnish with fresh goat cheese, toasted nuts, greens and colors of the rainbow edible flowers.