Creamy summer cucumber soup, well chilled

There was a bounty of cucumbers at my local store the other day. At the marked-down end of the vegetable fridge. I checked them — far from being in any way past it, they were firm and ripe and ready to go into a soup. A very chilled one.

There is cream in this soup, but if you left it out and replaced it with — I don’t know, almond milk? — I suppose it might qualify as vegetarian. But that is a road I choose not to go down, for various reasons. One, I’m likely to make a mistake and have an avalanche of green peppers and leeks poured on top of me by irate vegetarians.

But, chiefly, I am not vegetarian, nor am I in any way expert with vegetarian recipes. So who am I to proffer vegetarian recipes to people who know their terrain far better than I do?

I raise this because I received an email this week saying “Thank you but how about some vegetarian recipes?” Fair question. So here’s how I see this…

I don’t write with any particular group, diet, allergy or what are now called “dietaries” in mind. I don’t categorise any of my recipes. I cook what I like and what I know, and this means also that I don’t follow one single fad. Trends are not in my vocabulary. This means that my food is not for everyone, nor do I expect it to be. I’m only for people who like my way with cooking, whoever you are. Along the way, coincidentally, some of my recipes may happen to fall into a particular diet.

If I trawled through my (now six years’ worth) of recipes, I know I would find recipes suitable for a vegetarian diet, something that might please a pescatarian, and whatever paleo is. (I sighed and grumped my way through the Banting years, muttering darkly that it would pass. It did.) But they are not designed to meet that expectation, nor do I even think about that when I write any recipe. I don’t think, “oh this is a carnivores’ recipe” either. Or “this is gluten-free” — it’s just a recipe. And I can guarantee that if I tried to do that, I would mess it up.

I don’t know enough about a vegetarian’s choices to presume to write recipes for vegetarians. I have never bought almond milk. I bought some tofu a few months ago and it is still sitting in the fridge. I just have no interest in it and don’t know what possessed me to buy it.

So anyone who wants vegetarian recipes from me has come to the wrong guy. It’s not my place to write those. That’s for a vegetarian who writes recipes, and they are around.

If, however, you’re vegetarian and for some reason do like my stuff (and thank you for that), please do what I would do: if I see a recipe and there’s something in the ingredients that I don’t like or don’t want to use, I chuck it out and replace it with something else. You know what you like; I cannot presume to know that.

In this one, obviously you’d want to ditch the cream. And the milk. I could say, well, use coconut milk instead of dairy milk, or almond or whatever kind of non-dairy milk you fancy. And use vegetable stock, not chicken. And oil, not butter. But aren’t those choices you could make of your own accord?

Imagine if in recipes I had to write, “if you’re vegetarian, do this, if you can’t consume gluten, do that, if you’re…” — the heart and nuance of my writing would go out the window and within a week I’d be hating my work.

And it would be patronising. And I’m not comfortable with that.

Tony’s very chilled cucumber soup

(Makes at least 1 litre)

Ingredients

3 cucumbers, two of them peeled, the third not

I large onion, finely chopped

2 celery stalks, diced

3 Tbsp butter or cooking oil

A few grindings of nutmeg

1 scant tsp garlic powder

Salt to taste

White pepper to taste

500ml vegetable or chicken stock

250ml cream

250ml full cream milk

Method

Prepare the cucumber, onions and celery. Leave the skin on one cucumber, for colour. Dice the cucumber small. Cut some of the cucumber peels into tiny dice and put them in a little bowl, covered with cling film, to use as a garnish later. Refrigerate until needed.

Melt the butter or heat the oil and simmer the onions for a couple of minutes. Add the celery and continue cooking for 2 or 3 minutes more.

Add all the cucumber, stir, and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently so that it doesn’t catch.

Season with salt and white pepper and the nutmeg and garlic powder.

Add the stock, bring to a simmer and cook until the cucumber is soft, about 15 minutes on a low heat. Taste, and adjust seasoning if needed.

Add the milk and cream, bring to a boil, reduce to a rolling simmer and let it cook until the texture has enriched. It will thicken and develop a sheen.

Leave to cool and then refrigerate.

Remove from the fridge and use a handheld stick blender to process it to a smooth, silken soup.

Garnish with diced cucumber peel. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023.

Order Tony’s book, foodSTUFF, here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on plates by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.