Cold & Creamy Cantaloupe Soup

A simple chilled summer soup made with ripe melon and milk, brightened with a little lemon zest. So simple and yet ... somehow so unusual, so comforting, so not-your-every-day summer cantaloupe.

~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~

This recipe is so quick and easy
that I'm adding it to a special collection of easy summer recipes
published every summer since 2009.
Watch for new "summer easy" recipes all summer long!
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BEST RECIPES!

• Cold & Creamy Cantaloupe Soup Made the List!
• Best Recipes of 2012

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Learning to Cook Seasonally

Once upon a time a Sunday, a girl sat on a stool in what by the standards of the day was a big kitchen. She marveled at the commercial cooktop's high-BTU burners and the double ovens.

This was no showcase gourmet kitchen. It was a cook's kitchen with good knives within easy reach, a granite workspace for rolling crusts and croissants, a pantry lined with not-then-common small appliances, a food processor, a bread maker, an ice cream maker, a wine cooler. Years of Gourmet magazines were in easily searchable stacks.

Mostly, she marveled at the kitchen dance performed by the cooks, a husband and wife team working in rhythm side-by-side, conferring, consulting, connecting with one another and the food.

That hot Sunday, a steamy day in July – it was Dallas, after all – the girl fell off her tall stool into the world of simple, seasonal food prepared with care but without fuss.

And You?

Good guess, that "girl" on the stool was me. :-)

And what about you? Do you consider yourself a seasonal cook? Do you remember certain moments which made you into the kind of cook you are? Some times it happens all at once, other times that sensibility evolves over times.

I'd love to hear your story!

Chilled Soups Are Summer Soups

Another big lesson in seasonal cooking came with a bowl of chilled gazpacho.

Was the gazpacho any good?

Ha! I have no idea even if it made a B-I-G impression. It mattered not one whit if that gazpacho was the best ever, learned at a Spanish grandmother's knee – because it was served out of season.

You see, tomato gazpacho is a soup that should be made and served when the tomatoes and peppers are at the height of summer ripeness, when it's so hot you barely want to eat at all. Think dog days of summer ...

Instead, that bowl of gazpacho was served in November – a wet, blustery day in late November no less; to people attending a conference in an over- air-conditioned Kansas City hotel basement banquet room no less.

So let me be clear.

Cold & Creamy Cantaloupe Soup is a summer soup. And summer soups are special. They're not the hearty affairs that feed us body and soul during cold weather. They are summer soups, filled with fresh fruits and vegetables that are at their best only at the height of their growing seasons in summer.

So do yourself a favor and make Cold & Creamy Cantaloupe Soup with a summer melon, really ripe and bursting, one that ripened on the vine, one from your garden or the farmers market or a grocery that stocks local produce during the summer.

And then remember the moment.

Perhaps it will become a "moment" in your own journey as a seasonal cook.

RESOURCES My favorite recipe for Tomato Gazpacho, make it during summer! Favorite Summer Soup Recipes, a special collection of chilled soups for summer, a few summery soups served hot, and more!

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COLD & CREAMY CANTALOUPE SOUP

Hands-on time: 25 minutes
Time to table: 24 hours
Makes 8 cups

• 1 large ripe cantaloupe, washed well
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• Zest of a lemon
• 3 cups whole milk
• Dash white pepper
• Dash salt

Slice the skins off the melon, cut the melon itself in half and scoop out the seeds. Cut the flesh into rough cubes. Purée in a food processor or blender, this should yield about 5 cups.

In a large pot, combine the puréed cantaloupe, butter, sugar and lemon zest. Gently bring to a boil, reduce the heat and let simmer gently for 5 minutes.

Stir in the milk and bring back to a simmer, let gently simmer for 5 minutes.

Transfer to a storage container and refrigerate overnight.

Serve chilled in chilled bowls as a starter or as a main-course soup with a salad or sandwich or as a savory fruit dessert.

ALANNA's TIPS Cold & Creamy Cantaloupe Soup just might knock you over. Do allow the flavors to meld overnight, it takes on a lemony sweetness that makes for something almost sippable, completely spoonable. Naturally, with something so simple, the better the melon, the better the soup. The soup will separate as it chills but easily re-combines with a good stir or shake.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE Per Cup: 144 Calories; 8g Tot Fat; 5g Sat Fat; 24mg Cholesterol; 92mg Sodium; 14g Carb; 1g Fiber; 14g Sugar; 4g Protein. WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 4 & PointsPlus 4 & SmartPoints 5 & Freestyle 5

NUTRITION NOTE This is the kind of recipe I look at and wonder, Hey, is all that butter needed? Could it be just as good made with skim milk? The answers are "yes" and "no". Just to see, I tried a low-cal soup recently, reducing the butter and substituting skim milk for whole milk. The soup was okay-good but not knock-you-over and can't-wait-to-make-it-again good. I do think you could cut back the butter to 2 tablespoons but think whole milk is important to both texture and taste.

Adapted from a recipe copied onto a 3x5 card that day in Dallas, from Phyllis Murray, my mom's girlhood friend, and her husband Bob.

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Seasonal Cooking: This Same Week, Across the Years

Light Tomato Basil Quiche Basil-Cream Cheese Dip Cottage Cheese Pancakes (<< protein-packed!) BLT Pasta Salad (<< this week's favorite savory recipe) Easy Fruit Sorbet Grilled Steak with Summer Tomato Salad Tomatoes & Fresh Mozzarella for a Crowd Cold & Creamy Cantaloupe Soup Summer Couscous with Mango & Tomato Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Tacos (<< too hot to cook?) Salmon with Pesto Zucchini Noodles & Warm Tomatoes Cornmeal Muffins with Peaches Greek Chicken Dagwood Sandwiches

This Week, Elsewhere

~ Joe's Famous White Chocolate Bread Pudding ~
from Jilly's Cafe & Steakhouse
~ more St. Louis Restaurant Recipes ~
My Weekly Column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

~ Corn & Cucumber Salad with Fresh Blueberries ~
~ more Recent Recipes ~
A Veggie Venture

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More Cool-As-a-Cantaloupe Concoctions

(hover with a mouse for a description; otherwise click a photo to view the recipe)

~ Best & Favorite Summer Soups ~
~ more cantaloupe recipes ~

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Shop Your Pantry First

(helping home cooks save money on groceries)

~ cantaloupe recipes ~
~ lemon recipes ~

~ All Recipes, By Ingredient ~
~ How to Save Money on Groceries ~

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make Cold & Creamy Cantaloupe Soup, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.

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