Sweet & Spicy Cucumber Soup

Since my day job involves website analytics, I’ve had some nerdy fun following the search terms and traffic sources to my little blog.  My most trafficked post, for instance, is this tart and the most commonly used search terms resulting in a visit include “apple and pear crisp ina garten” “quinoa and kale crustless quiche” and “sopes Mexican”.  Dorky? You bet. Fun? For me.

My favorite stat is that, for a time, my carrot-ginger salad dressing blog post ranked 1^st in a Yahoo! blog search. As a former Yahoo! employee, that makes me smile. How, you may be wondering, does this get us to cucumber soup?

I was struggling, you see, to get rid of use all the cucumbers piling up in my produce drawer when it hit me. I’d go to Yahoo! Blog search, type in cucumber soup and use the first food blogger recipe in the search results. A little blogger pay it forward. It turns out this was a fairly auspicious decision because the soup is actually pretty darn good. Considering cucumbers are not my favorite, this is high praise!

As foodblogger Emma Clare aptly points out, the most redeeming quality is that this is NOT another cold cucumber soup.  It’s a roasted, spicy and served warm. If you  need to use up love cucumbers, I suggest you give this new approach a try. Enjoy!

Sweet & Spicy Roasted Cucumber Soup
Ingredients
Courtesy of Emma Clare Eats

• 4 cucumbers, peeled and sliced
• 1/2 cup olive oil, plus one tablespoon
• 2 tbs honey
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 pinch cayenne pepper
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 2 cups broth
• 1 avocado
• 1 cup plain greek yogurt
• Salt & Pepper

 Directions  

  

• Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
• Peel and slice the cucumbers, then arrange in a baking dish. Whisk together the olive oil, honey, red pepper flakes and cayenne pepper; pour over cucumbers and toss to coat. Roast in the oven for 45 minutes.
• Meanwhile, saute the onion in 1 tbs olive oil for 3-4 minutes until soft. Sprinkle with pepper and cook for another minute. Add broth and cook over medium-high heat for 5 minutes. 
• Remove from heat, add cooked cucumbers, broth and avocado. Blend with an immersion blender until smooth.  Top with a dollop of Greek yogurt and serve.