Cold Sorrel and Coconut Milk Soup - Recipe

First, a quick bit of housekeeping. I recently moved the Herbivoracious email list over to a new, more robust provider. In the process, some of you received an email asking you to reconfirm your subscription. This kind of thing is easy to miss, especially if you are aren’t expecting them. So if you aren’t getting today’s post by email, just sign up again. Look over there ——-> and you’ll see a place near the top of the sidebar to enter your email address. Of course if you never were on the list, please sign up too! It is a great way to make sure you see each new recipe, and I’ll also be sending out the occasional special announcement or offer to mailing list subscribers only.

Now, on to today’s recipe. This isn’t what I set out to make. I’d bought some sorrel at our farmer’s market, with an idea to do more of a straight-ahead Indian style soup, substituting the sorrel where you might normally have spinach or another leafy green. As soon as I’d wilted the sorrel, its lemony flavor was so refreshing that I was experiencing cognitive dissonance tasting it hot. I saw right away that it wanted to be a cold soup. I stuck with my plan to use coconut milk, not cream, but pureed it and limited the flavoring to just a bit of fresh ginger. Once chilled, I loved the result. I could have easily slugged back the whole thing in a glass.

I’ve only made this once so far, so I haven’t tried doing it without cooking the sorrel at all, but I suspect that would be a fine move and probably have a bit nicer color. If you try it, let me know.

With pureed soups, the difference between good and great is in achieving a velvety texture. Run your blender for a good long time so that it has maximum opportunity to reduce the particle size. Then use first a coarse sieve, than your finest sieve to strain out the remaining fibers. Or better yet, buy yourself this badass professional fine chinois - I got one and love it.