5-Star Makeover - Raspberry Salmorejo with Balsamic Caviar

"Between soup and love, the first is better."
~ old Spanish saying

First of all, thank you for the outpouring of compassion and well wishes from everyone following my last post. I am very grateful and overwhelmed by how kind everyone has been, however soon after that grief started to kick in and I suddenly found myself in that weird place called 'shut-down'. Luckily I recognized this and immediately made the decision to take a hiatus from this blog (and also others) for a few weeks. If I hadn’t been coming round to your lovely blogs to say ‘Hello’ or ‘Wow!’ lately, well this is the reason.

All this isn’t even newsworthy, so why am I telling you about it? It's not that I think anyone out there is pacing for my recipes or stories, in fact I’m still amazed that in between the chaos of stuff on the internet and the lushness of life, someone out there would want to pause to read my stuff. I’m just trying to say that I felt sad, burnt out and needed some time out to recover, perhaps make some space for new things, more creative and loving things. I am not that type of person who can write, create or participate in something just for the sake of it, I needed to feel that it’s really coming from the heart or I’d rather not be doing it at all.

Anyway, now that my art-making, love-initiating engine has cooled down sufficiently, I’d like to restart it with this chilled soup recipe – Raspberry Salmorejo with Balsamic Caviar. Salmorejo is a typical dish from Cordoba in the south of Spain, it's similar to a traditional tomato gazpacho but richer and has the velvety texture of vichyssoise due to the addition of bread. As you can see in the above picture, I had picked a lot of tomatoes from my parents' farm last weekend and could have gone down the traditional tomato Salmorejo way. But I wanted to kick it up a notch for this month’s 5-Star Makeover Challenge and went with raspberries instead.

hosted by 5 Star Foodie & Lazaro Cooks!

Berries in cold soup make a lot of sense to me, it's light, refreshing and perfect for warm weather. I just needed to carefully balance out all the flavors because this could have very easily turned into a smoothie rather than a savory appetizer. 

I served mine up with extra raspberries and brunoise-cut (very small cubes) bell pepper, basil and onion placed at the bottom of the serving glass. It makes for a lovely and flavorful hidden surprise for anyone eating this. To complement the raspberry flavor of the soup, I also made balsamic caviar out of balsamic vinegar and agar agar. A few flower-shaped croutons and a cucumber ribbon completed the dish. It was fun and very simple to make, and a great initiation into chilled soups for me - yes, it's my first time eating it too! 

Thanks to Lazaro and Natasha again for hosting this monthly event. I'm really glad I decided to participate and am looking forward to the round-up of all the chilled soups this Friday over here.

Raspberry Salmorejo with Balsamic Caviar

Makes: 4 servings

Raspberry Salmorejo 

100g stale white bread (1/2 baguette)

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons raspberry vinegar

400 g (14oz) frozen raspberries

1/5 garlic clove, peeled

120 ml extra virgin olive oil

100 ml mineral water

1/2 tsp salt

1. Break the bread into small pieces and mix with the olive oil, vinegar and water in a bowl, Set aside while you make the soup.

2. Process raspberries with the rest of the ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Pass mixture through a fine sieve.

3. Put strained mixture back in the processor (rinse it beforehand), add the soaked bread and salt and blitz it into a smooth puree. Keep in the fridge until serving. It needs to be really cold before serving so allow for a few hours in the fridge before serving.

Brunoise of Raspberry, Bell Pepper and Basil

1/2 handful of basil leaves

75 ml (2.5 oz) extra virgin olive oil

25 g raspberries, sliced into 4

15 g peeled red bell pepper, cut in cubes

5 g of finely chopped onions

Salt

1. Process the basil with the olive oil until smooth.

2. Mix the basil oil with the rest of the ingredients and reserve.

Garnish

4 cucumber ribbons (cut them thin lengthwise with vegetable peeler or mandolin)

4 tablespoons balsamic agar caviar (see below)

Croutons

Balsamic Agar Caviar

1 cup light, vegetable oil

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon agar agar powder

Extra equipment: Needle-less syringe or small plastic pipette

1. Pour oil into a tall, vertical container such as a glass. Place the oil in the freezer for at least 30 mins. You need the oil to be very, very cold because you'll need to inject the agar agar into the oil later on.

2. For the agar solution, stir the agar powder into the balsamic vinegar in a small heatproof pan. Warm this up on the stove or microwave until it just starts boiling. Take it off the heat, let it cool for a minute and start to fill the syringe or pipette with the liquid.

3. Inject agar solution drop by drop into the oil, just underneath the surface. You can adjust the size of the spheres by the amount of liquid you inject. Let the droplet float down to the bottom of the glass. 

(Note:  The cold environment surrounding the agar droplet would cause the agar to solidify immediately. To get very round spheres, the glass needs to be tall enough for the droplet to form into a perfect ball as it falls slowly to the bottom. Note: If you're making a lot of spheres, the temperature of the oil may rise, so return it to the freezer to make it cold again).

4. Pour the oil through a strainer to retrieve agar spheres. You can re-use the oil. Rinse the spheres under running water to get rid of the oil and keep in the fridge if not using immediately. 

Assemble and Serve

1. In the bottom of a glass, place a base of the raspberry brunoise making sure you do not touch the sides of the glass.

2. Taking the same care, cover with raspberry salmorejo.

3. Finish with a ribbon of cucumber, a spoon of balsamic caviar, croutons and a pinch of salt flakes.

4. Serve immediately before it gets warm.