Late summer cucumber soup

We absolutely love having a kitchen garden, but in late summer we tend to suffer from a surfeit of salad ingredients, and recently we were overwhelmed by a crop of cucumbers, threatening us with an alarming daily growth - of both length and girth. Because, it has to be admitted, there aren't many recipes for cucumbers, it was clearly time (as has often been the case over the years) to create a new one. People often ask where all the recipes come from. For the most part, quite a lot of intense research goes on, but sometimes it's simply about a pile of ingredients staring you in the face. In this case it all ended happily with cucumbers, lettuce, spring onions and new potatoes blended into a supremely good soup - so much so that non-gardeners should definitely make a point of buying a cucumber specially.Serve it hot for the last taste of a summer best forgotten, or if, by the time this recipe reaches you, we are having a late burst of sunshine, it is equally good served very cold in chilled soup bowls.

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  Serves 4

Ingredients
400g cucumber
4-5 good-size spring onions
1 medium potato (100g), peeled
1 round or cos lettuce
1 heaped tsp butter
850ml vegetable stock
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
To serve:
1 tbsp double cream or crème fraîche
a few snipped chives

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This recipe is taken from The Telegraph Weekend magazine and is part of a series Delia is contributing.

Method

To prepare for this, chop the cucumber into chunks (thankfully no need to peel) and the same with the potato. Slice the spring onions (including the green part), while the lettuce leaves can just be separated and washed, and the leaves torn.

Now in a medium-size saucepan melt the butter and add all the prepared vegetables, stirring them around a bit. Then, keeping the heat low, pop a lid on and let them sweat gently for 10 minutes.

After that pour in the stock, season and, after a couple of stirs, bring it back to a gentle simmer. Put the lid back on so it can simmer gently for another 20 minutes. When the time is up, use a stick blender to purée the soup, making sure there are no escaped bits of cucumber that the blades didn’t catch – it will finish up a magnificent fresh green colour, very pretty.

Reheat gently and serve in warm soup bowls with some cream swirled into each one and a few chives sprinkled over. 

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