Avocado Soup

Many moons ago when I was a young working woman who had the good fortune to travel all over the world for her job, I had a business lunch at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.  The Biltmore in those days had recently been renovated and featured the work of the artist Jim Dine—whose work is now widely known—but then he was a hot, up and coming talent with whom the owner of the Biltmore had commissioned all of the interior art for the hotel’s public spaces and rooms.   I remember the traditional, beautiful guest rooms had  high ceilings, and what appeared at first to be classic, elegant moldings.  But when you looked more closely, you saw that the tools of the artist were imbedded into the molding—so that paint rollers, paint tubes, drip trays, spacklers, screwdrivers, hammers, rolls of tape and all kinds of other things were stuck to the molding where the eye was expecting twirly cartouches—but all painted white so as not to be easily noticed–very subtle, clever and whimsical.

But back to lunch, the gentleman I was lunching with was the Director of Marketing for the hotel.  As icebreaker talk, he gave me a big pitch about how good the avocado soup was and how I must have it as an appetizer.  Being a sport, and breaking the ice right back, I bypassed the ceviche I was craving and ordered the avocado soup.  It had me at my first spoonful.

After all that, this recipe is not from the Biltmore (I never thought to ask), but is a version of one that I found in the New York Times Cookbook that is pretty darn close.  One thing that the Craig Claiborne version didn’t include was lemon juice and I thought long and hard (is that weird?) about whether or not to add lemon.  Because when you taste it without the lemon, you get the full force of the subtle flavor of avocado.  I was worried that the lemon would taste too much like guacamole.  But when I finally decided that I really needed to do it, I added just the tablespoon of lemon juice and to my taste, this brightened the dish right to where I loved it.

This is easy to make and is a really nice appetizer for a dinner party.  Serve it in chilled demitasse cups with tiny spoons—sitting in a living room or on a patio, summer soup doesn’t get much better than this.

Avocado Soup

4 to 6 servings (6 for sure if you use demitasse cups)

Ingredients:

2 ripe avocados
1 teaspoon grated onion
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup sour cream
½ cup half and half
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Chives, for garnish

Preparation:

Wash, peel and cut the avocado into large pieces. Combine the avocado with all of the other ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth and well blended.  Taste and correct the seasonings.  Store the soup in a covered bowl in the refrigerator until very cold.  Taste again, correct the seasonings and serve with snipped chives on top.