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Recipe for "rainbow-soup"

NAME

     RAINBOW-SOUP - A light summer soup with multicolored peppers
     Every year in late summer, produce counters fill  with  mul-
     ticolored  bell  (capsicum) peppers. Green bell peppers, red
     bell peppers, yellow bell peppers. Even purple bell peppers.
     Creative  chefs  try hard to take advantage of the splash of
     colors, and make rainbow salads or rainbow appetizers.  Here
     is  a  different  way  to  rejoice  in multicolored peppers:
     pepper soup. The peppers float to the top of a  light  broth
     and artfully dodge your spoon as you try to eat them.

INGREDIENTS (Serves 6-8)

     1.5 l     chicken broth
     1         medium onion, chopped
     300 g     cooked rice
     4         bell peppers, in assorted colors.
     2.5 ml    savory
     10 ml     chives
     2         egg yolks
     30 ml     lemon juice
               salt and pepper, to taste

PROCEDURE

          (1)  Bring the broth to a boil. Cook the rice.
          (2)  Chop the onion and saute the pieces until they are
               golden  brown.   Add  to the broth. Add the savory
               and chives to the broth.
          (3)  Clean the seeds and cores  from  the  peppers  and
               chop  the cleaned peppers into pieces. Set chopped
               peppers aside.
          (4)  Add the rice to the broth and cook for 5 minutes.
          (5)  Add the chopped peppers to the boiling  broth  and
               simmer for 1 minute. Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks
               in a 2-cup bowl.
          (6)  Thicken the soup with the egg yolks by adding  the
               hot  soup  to  the  beaten yolks a little bit at a
               time, stirring constantly, until a cup or  two  of
               soup  has  been added to the yolks. Dump this mix-
               ture back into the simmering broth. Add the  lemon
               juice.  Season  to  taste  with  salt  and pepper.
               Serve.

NOTES

     The thickening  technique  is  identical  to  that  used  in
     avgolemono recipes, which you can consult for more details.
     The flavor and texture balance of the soup  depends  on  the
     amount  that the peppers are cooked. The more you cook them,
     the more their flavor exudes into the  broth  but  the  more
     they lose their texture. I find that about 2 minutes in sim-
     mering broth is the right amount.
     You can have fun with colored geometric patterns as you  cut
     the  peppers.  They don't have to be chunks. You can cut the
     yellow peppers into circles and the green peppers into  long
     strips  and the red peppers into cross sections and the pur-
     ple peppers into stocky triangles. Be creative. The  colored
     shapes  will  float  to  the top of the broth and play hide-
     and-seek with each other.

RATING

     Difficulty: moderate (egg yolk thickening and pepper cooking
     require  some  practice).   Time: 10 minutes preparation, 10
     minutes cooking.  Precision: No need to measure.

CONTRIBUTOR

     Brian Reid
     DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, California, USA
     decwrl!reid    -or- reid@decwrl.dec.com