Cold summer soup

This is a lovely cold summer soup. It uses a nice mix of fresh ingredients and cupboard staples and, unlike many cold vegetable soups, it is cooked and chilled overnight. I made it recently to bring to my friend Sheri's house. I offered to come over and help her paint her porch and to bring some soup. We had a relaxing day "working". It was a very civilized way to do a house project: arrive and have coffee and homemade blueberry-cornmeal muffins; paint; lunch of cold veggie soup, homemade herb bread and cherries; paint; tea and homemade oatmeal cookies (you can guess that Sheri likes to bake...).

This recipe is based on the recent issue of Everyday by Rachel Ray. I bought the magazine because one of the feature recipes was "the best ribs you'll ever eat". Well upon further inspection, the recipe requires you to make three different sauces and needs almost 4 1/2 hours of cooking time! Although, I am sure this would make delicious ribs, I don't have the time or inclination in the summer to make 3 different sauces for just a meat dish. I made the main sauce (which required the purchase of a box of peach gelatin powder?!) for ribs to serve at dinner for my family and my mom and dad. The result was that the ribs were okay, but overly sweet.

However, the happy accident is that I stumbled upon this soup recipe. I had to change the recipe a bit because of ingredient availability and ease of preparation (for example, I didn't bother to puree it). It is really, really good.

Cold Summer Soup (based on "Summer-strone" in Everyday by Rachel Ray, August 2009)

1/2 cup Israeli cousous

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 small cucumbers, peeled and diced

1 can (14 oz or 398 ml) diced tomatoes

1 1/2 teaspoons paprika

1 900 ml tetrapak of vegetable broth

1 medium zucchini, shredded (I used a box grater)

handful of fresh basil, chopped

grated peel of one lemon

* Cook the couscous in a pot of boiling salted water for about 8 minutes. Then drain and rinse with cold water. In a large pot, add the olive oil and cucumbers and cook until the cucumbers get a bit brown (about 10 minutes). Mix in the tomatoes, paprika, broth, cooked couscous and zucchini. Cook together for another 10 minutes. Take off the heat and stir in the basil and lemon peel. Chill overnight.