CSA Week 3: Cold Blueberry Garlic Almond Soup

Week 3 of our CSA and another very exciting haul. It's still been extremely rainy here, so no fruit share yet, but we've been promised a double share next week. (Yikes; I mean, yay!) But we have some lovely vegetables again, still more springy than summery, but no complaints here. And things that I can't usually find in Chinatown. So...what did we get? 1 (very small) head of broccoli, 1 head of lettuce, 3 beets (with their beautiful greens still attached), 2 heads of garlic with the thick green stalk still attached, 1 pound swiss chard and 1 bunch mint.

Once I brought everything home and stored it properly to last the week, I began thinking about what to make for dinner. What most excited me about this haul was the garlic. I'm a really big fan of what I call "fresh garlic" since it's the garlic I prefer to eat raw. So it's my garlic of choice for pestos and uncooked sauces (before I discovered garlic scapes, of course). But I've been making lots of sauces lately so I started thinking about a cold soup. Then the Boy and I started discussing whether people eat beets raw so I did some research, decided that they do and garnished my soup with some chopped beet. This soup was inspired by Cold Garlic Almond Soup from Anne's Food.

While very tasty, I never did completely get rid of the almond meal texture. Any suggestions? And the addition of blueberries is the reason for the stupendous color.

Cold Blueberry Garlic Almond Soup

• 3 slices bread (I used whole wheat), crusts removed
• water
• 1/4 bag almond slivers (3-4 ounces)
• 1 cup blueberries (I used frozen)
• 2 cloves fresh garlic
• 1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 tablespoons blood orange olive oil
• 1/4 tablespoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
• 1 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
• 2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon cream sherry
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
• 2 tablespoons raisins
• 1/2 beet, peeled and chopped

Tear the bread into about 9 pieces. Submerge in a bowl of cold water and let soak for 30 minutes. Squeeze out as much water as possible and remove bread to bowl of food processor. Add almonds, blueberries and garlic and process until smooth, scraping down the sides as necessary. Add olive oils, salt, curry powder, pepper, water, sherry and vinegar. Process again until as smooth as possible (and perhaps you'll find a way to get rid of the coarse almond texture, perhaps by straining the soup through a cheesecloth-lined strainer?). Transfer to a glass bowl, cover, and chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve (1-2 hours).
Before serving, mix together pine nuts, raisins and beet in a small bowl as garnish. Serve soup and invite diners to sprinkle garnish on top. Enjoy!
Links to other garlic noshes:

• Roasted Garlic from Simply Recipes