Beautiful beets at the farmer’s market.

Making raw soups is so easy. Generally all the ingredients go into a blender and in a short time, less than a minute in most cases [not including prep time], you have a fresh tasty soup.

I had a craving for Beet Soup with an Orange Twist; made it today and shared some with my hubby. We ate outside relaxing in the sunny, warm, almost hot weather. It felt like a lazy summer day. I love the mingle of flavors in this soup. Earthy, sweet, a subtle kick from the fresh garlic, a hint of thyme, every spoon full is so delicious.

Beet Soup with an Orange Twist

This soup is a raw version with a citrus twist of an Eastern European favorite. The flavor of fresh beetroot is delicious, refreshing and pairs well with orange.

Wash separately and well beetroots and oranges. Cut off tops of beetroots, and then peel outer skin of with a vegetable peeler. Process in food processor or grate beetroots into a large bowl and when finished put grated beetroot in blender. Add orange peel then cut oranges in half and juice. Add juice of orange and remaining ingredients to the blender or food processor and blend well.

To serve, pour into serving bowls.

Make about 3 cups; serves 2

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Aren’t tomatillos pretty? They are like little tomatoes in a paper lantern. So cute. Tomatillos weren’t a big part of my diet, but I have enjoyed them in the past. The last time that I remember and if they were in fact tomatillos, I eat them as some sort of salsa with oysters. Using this last dish I had as inspiration to create this recipe, I bought about 1 1/2 pounds of them and got to work undressing these covered cuties.

I figured making a soup of them would be a good way to get re-aquainted with these little tomatoes from South of the Border.

Making this soup is fairly simple but there are a couple things I should point out.

Picking the freshest tomatillos is easy. Look to the outer husk as a guide. It’s color should be green, and if the husk is greenish-brown, this is an indication it is starting to lose its freshness. Make sure to rinse them off well once you peel off the husk to remove the stickiness from its skin.

Some like it hot and if you want this soup on the spicy side keep the seeds and membrane of the jalapeno in the mix. Otherwise, remove them for a mild taste.

When working with any variety of mushroom, all need to be cleaned well because there is nothing worse than getting a mouthful of grit. For the oyster mushroom, you can quickly soak them in cold water or rinse them under cold running water. Be sure to use them immediately or soon after you do so.

Making the sour cream is easy when you have cashew flour on hand. I usually keep a small container it that I make from cashews that I’ve soaked for 4-6 hours, dried, and then ground to a flour-like consistency.

Oyster Mushroom and Tomatillo Soup

This soup is light and fresh with a slight kick of spiciness. They don’t call these oyster mushroom for nothing. These mushrooms add texture and that wonderful oyster-like flavor.

Soup

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth and creamy.

Marinate Mushrooms

Mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl. Season to taste. Marinate for 30 minutes. Remove and finely chop the mushrooms.

Raw Sour Cream

Blend in the blender until creamy.

Garnish

Assemble
Mound about 2 tablespoons of oyster mushrooms in the center of a soup bowl. Pour the tomallio soup around the mushrooms. Garnish with raw sour cream, thinly sliced radishes and top off with fresh ground black pepper.

Serves 4

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Photography, text, and recipe by Raw Chef Omid Jaffari

Carrot and Pistachio Soup is a smooth, creamy and delicious soup that is healthy and filling. It has a delicate natural buttery nutty flavor with nuts and pieces of carrots that you can actually taste. Enjoy this soup as a snack or a light meal in itself.

Good things about the ingredients

Carrots have a mildly sweet taste and a crunchy texture and are very rich in vitamin A, carotenoids and vitamin K.

Macadamia and Pistachio nuts are nutrient dense foods that are high in protein, fats and dietary fiber.

Olive oil is a good source of unsaturated fatty acids and is available in both high-oleic (high in monounsaturated fats) and high-linoleic (high in polyunsaturated fats) varieties.

Green cardamoms, fresh coriander, chervil and shallots add flavor and a nice aroma to the dish, but they also have beneficial medicinal properties.

Carrot and Pistachio Soup

I purchase organic green cardamom pods online at Mountain Rose Herbs, but you can also find them at Whole Foods markets, health food stores, and ethnic markets.

For the Garnish

Fresh chervil or coriander
A pinch of crushed pistachios

Method for making the soup

Blend the soaked macadamia nuts, adding water half a cup at a time (use the water used for soaking + 2 cups water) until smooth, well blended, and a milk-like consistency is obtained. It should yield 4 cups macadamia milk.

Add the other ingredients, except the pistachios, and leave it in the macadamia milk (which is in the blender) for 5 minutes. Then blend them all together until semi smooth. Leave the soup in the fridge for 5 minutes to mature and develop flavors, then for another 1-2 minutes at room temperature to take off the chill.

To Serve

Place your Carrot & Pistachio Soup into soup bowls and divide the pistachios between the two bowls, give it a gentle stir, and smooth the top part of the soup with the back of your spoon.

Garnish with a pinch of crushed pistachios and a few leaves of fresh chervil or coriander.

Serves 4

Other Recipes by Omid

Stricky Date Lovers with Upside Down Sugar Cane Whipped Cream

Articles by Omid

Enzymes and Longevity

Effects of Cooking on Vitamins and Minerals

For more recipes by Omid,visit his blog Shiitake and co-founded website Tried Tasted and Served

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June is an exciting month for summery fruit. It’s like a fruit paradise. When the warm and long days really start to heat up, I mainly think of food in terms of light, refreshing, cool, chilled, cold, and always fresh, organic, and local.

One of the fruits that gets me giddy for what summer has to offer is cherries. There’s nothing like a big bowl full of cherries, and if you can pick them straight from the tree, even better. How lucky you are if you have access to a cherry tree.

Sweet cherries are the type of cherries I’m most familiar with and I had only heard of sour cherries until I was introduced to them during my stay in Hungary. My mother-in-law has three cherry trees in her backyard, one regular cherry and two sour cherry trees. I don’t know much about the different varieties of cherries, but to my surprise, the sour cherries I tasted where so delicious and not too astringent or sour, but sweet. I preferred their taste to the sweet cherries.

I’m many miles away from those wonderful cherry trees that are loaded with fruit right now and to my knowledge, there isn’t a cherry tree that I can pick, but I can pick up cherries to enjoy at the much appreciated farmer’s market.

This soup recipe is my adaptation of my mother-in-law’s Hungarian recipe “Hideg Cseresznyeleves”, translation: “Cold Cherry Soup”.

Cold Cherry Soup with Fresh Mint

Fresh mint and cherries go well together, they make an excellent flavor pairing.

Garnish
Cherry halves
Mint

Prepare cashew cream. Rinse the cherries and remove stems and pit [I like to use a melon baller to do the job]. Add the pitted cherries, lemon juice and zest, cinnamon and cashew cream to a high-speed blender. Blend until smooth. Place in the refrigerator at least one hour or more, until chilled.

Divide the soup among individual soup bowls. Place a mound of cherry halves in the center of the soup. Top with a mint sprig or julienne mint leaves.

Serves 2-4

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Borsch soup is one of the most popular vegetable based soups originating from Eastern Europe. This healthy soup is traditionally made with beetroots as the main ingredient.

I love beets and have made different variations of this soup, from a quick and simple version, to a more complex soup with lots of complimentary ingredients.

This soup showcases a gorgeous hue ranging from pretty pink to a deep vibrant reddish-purple, colors only beetroot can offer, no matter what other ingredients are tossed into the mix.

This particular borsch recipe is from the recipe collection in the DVD Going Raw. It is a deliciously healthy and simple recipe, and a wonderful way to enjoy raw beets.

Tip – for those of you who don’t own a high-speed blender, grate the beets using a food processor with the grating disc attachment, or use a box grater. This way the beet pieces are small enough for a standard blender to liquefy with ease, and it helps create less stress on the machine.

Borsch Soup

Basil and sun-dried tomatoes add delicious flavor to this already delicious soup. If these ingredients for garnish aren’t available, try using other herbs like cilantro, as suggested, dill or thyme.

I used lucuma powder in place of the dried cane sugar called for in the original recipe.

Place the beets, carrots, celery, water, sea salt, lemon juice and olive oil in a high-speed blender. Blend until liquefied or to desired consistency.

Pour into a bowl and garnish with fresh basil or cilantro, and sun dried tomatoes.

Serves 1-2

Going Raw DVD

I recently had the pleasure of being introduced to two lovely vibrant individuals Ronnie and Minh. They are a raw food husband and wife team living a healthy and dynamic lifestyle. Ronnie and Minh worked together to produce Going Raw, a DVD full of delicious raw recipes and information.

Ronnie’s commentary is informative and encouraging. Minh Nguyen is a Master Raw and Living Food Chef who guides us step-by-step through an easy to follow process of making the nutritious recipes compiled in this DVD. It is a great resource for the raw food enthusiast.

Today Ronnie and Minh have kindly offered two (2) Going Raw DVD’s as part of Raw Epicurean Healthy Holiday Giveaway. Many thanks to this beautiful couple!

Answering the following question enters you in the draw for one of two (2) Going Raw DVD’s!

What is your favorite raw soup?

This is a great DVD, one of two they have released. To learn more about Ronnie and Minh and what they offer, visit their website UB Raw.

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Who doesn’t love a delicious bowl or cup of soup? I love making fresh delicious soups and I have many favorites and this soup is one of them.

Gazpacho is one of those soups that bring the best of many fresh vegetables together, and that’s what makes it so good, so use the freshest most flavorful vegetables you can find. The fresher the ingredients the better the end result.

A great thing about gazpacho is you can make it with whatever vegetables you have on hand. Use tomatoes as a staple or base ingredient and work from there. Follow this or other recipes as a guide, use your favorite herbs to season, and most importantly have fun experimenting and trying new variations.

Gazpacho is traditionally served as a cold soup but I like to serve it at room temperature too. If you aren’t already a fan of gazpacho, you might certainly become one after a spoonful of this fresh, flavorful, and truly delightful soup.

Gazpacho

This soup taste especially delicious when the flavors are allowed to combine, let this soup rest for a few hours, ideally overnight. This is a great soup to make in advance.

Apple cider vinegar [1 – 1 ½ tablespoons] can substitute the lemon juice called for in this recipe.

Dice the tomatoes, red peppers, red onions, cucumber, and celery; divide each in half. Place one half of each diced vegetable in a blender or food processor. Place the remaining diced vegetables in a bowl and set aside.

Add the garlic, vinegar, basil, thyme, and parsley to the blender or food processor and puree until smooth.

Pour the puree to the bowl of diced vegetables. Add the extra virgin olive oil and stir to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Allow the soup to stand for a couple hours, allowing the flavors to combine, or refrigerate overnight. Serve garnished with lemon and cilantro or parsley.

Serves 4

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Yesterday while shopping in my favorite area of the grocery store – the produce section – among the fresh fruits and vegetables I placed in the shopping cart, I couldn’t resist loading up on spinach. It was as if the leafy greens were calling out to me. Maybe it was my eyes seeing what my body needs and desires – more and more greens.

It didn’t take me long to figure out what I would do with some of the spinach. I wanted a fresh chilled soup and thought of a simple recipe to satisfy my craving.

This bisque style soup is so perfect for this time of year that I can’t help sharing it with you. All you need is a blender, ideally a high-speed one, to whiz the ingredients together.

The rich shade of green is beautiful and the smooth texture has interest with bits and pieces of spinach. When it makes sense in a recipe, I believe spinach isn’t spinach without some garlic and you’ll taste a hint of it in this creamy bisque style soup.

Spinach Bisque Soup

The flavor of the cashew milk goes well with spinach. Feel free to use whatever type of nut or seed milk you prefer. I had this chilled soup for lunch, it was light and refreshing, yet filling.

Thoroughly wash the spinach leaves, if necessary. Measure 5 cups of spinach leaves and place in a bowl. Set aside.

Place the cashews in the blender container and pour the filtered water in, place the lid on top, and blend into a milk-like consistency. Reserve 2 tablespoons of the cashew milk for garnish, if desired. Add half the bowl of spinach to the blender and blend until the spinach and cashew milk is well combined. Add the chopped garlic, sea salt, ground pepper, and the remaining spinach leaves; blend until well mixed.

Pour the bisque soup into a serving container or into individual bowls; chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve. This soup will keep refrigerated up to two days.

Serve chilled or bring to room temperature. Swirled the reserved cashew milk into the soup and sprinkle with a pinch of crushed mixed peppers.

Serves 2 – double this recipe to serve 4

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This rich and nourishing celery soup is a raw version of cream of celery soup, without the cream. This recipe makes great use of extra ribs of celery.

I wanted the soups consistency to be as smooth and creamy as possible so I juiced the celery stalks. Juicing the celery helped remove any fibrous strings so no worries about it getting in the way.

If you do not have a juicer on hand, you can remove the fibrous strings by making a thin cut into one end of the stalk and peeling away the fibrous strings or use a vegetable peeler to strip away the strings from the outer stalks.

Select organic celery that has nice fresh looking leaves on the end and use it as garnish. If not, fresh parsley leaves work.

Raw Creamy Celery Soup

A rich and nourishing raw food version of cream of celery soup. Add texture and crunch by mixing in thinly sliced celery.

Run the celery stalks through a juicer. Juice enough celery to yield one measuring cup. Pour the celery juice in a blender, and then add the avocado, water, limejuice, extra virgin olive oil, shallots/onions, and agave to the blender. Blend until smooth and creamy. Store in a covered container, and refrigerator an hour or over night.

Serving suggestions
Serve this soup chilled or bring it to room temperature. Garnish with celery leaves, fresh parsley leaves, or thinly sliced celery.

Serves 2 – 4

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