We are back in the thick of doing vegan pop-up dining events at our house – every second Saturday. Haviving to make and serve up a four course meal for up to 12 people, we have found doing a chilled soup is a great starter – easy to prepare well before hand and can be plated just a touch ahead of time.
The inspiration for this dish came from Raw and Simple by Judita Wignall. Hers was a cucumber basil soup, but we opted to make it a cucumber mint soup, and add the basil pistou for extra flavour and also decoration.
The other thing we changed out was the cashew nuts. Most raw dishes seem to be based on nuts, and as we hwould be serving nut based dessert and nut based vegan cheezes, we thought more nuts in the soup would be too much.
So we used an oat creem instead. I’ll show you the oat creem in the next post.
So for the soup –
Ingredients:
2 fresh cucumbers, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 C fresh mint leaves
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1 C oat creem
3 T lemon juice
1 t salt
What to do:
Simply put all ingredients in a high speed blender and whizz till smooth and creemy.
Taste and add more salt if necessary. Pour into a jug and chill.
Notes:
The quantities above make about 1,2 to 1,3 L of oat creem.
We served up garnished with a drizzle of oat creem, some basil pistou and an edible flower.
Check out Green and Vegan FB for pics of our latest events.
Re the basil pistou – a pistou is rather like a pesto without the parmesan cheese or pine nuts. I’ll also give that recipe next time.
Bon apetit.
