So last Saturday, I had the ideal cooking conditions. Two to three hours, plenty of fresh ingredients, and a clean kitchen. This is a rare and glorious thing, so I spent a few hours just in pure, rampant experimentation.

Anyway, the full meal will be in the next post, but this is the bit I have a recipe for - a cucumber-tomato soup, extensively modified from a cucumber and yellow tomato soup I found online. It's a nice, clean, fresh chilled soup - something that can come in handy during the latest globally-warmed summer of death.

Fun fact. At one point, where I would normally have strained the soup, I thought I would be clever and use my food mill, which I bought years ago on a whim and never use. So I got it out, washed it, ran the rough puree through it, and it was a complete failure. I ended up using a strainer. Fucking food mill. Anyway, to make this, you'll need:

• 1.5 pound cucumbers
  4 roma tomatoes
  1/4 small yellow onion (fresh)
  4 cloves fresh garlic
  1 tsp fresh mint
  1 small lemon
  1 tsp kosher salt
  3-4 healthy grinds of fresh black pepper
  2 tsp good honey
• 2-3 cherry or grape tomatoes

PREP / COOKING: Peel the cucumbers, but don't seed them. Cut the cores out of the tomatoes. Zest and juice the lemon, and peel the garlic.

Put everything in the work bowl of your food processor, and puree it. Over a large bowl, pour the puree through a fine mesh strainer. With the back of, ideally, a rubber spoonula, push and stir and push and stir the puree, squeezing as much liquid out as you can. When all you can get out is a drop or two per stir or press, you're basically done.

Thinsly slice the cherry or grape tomatoes and add them at the end as a garnish. Makes 3-4 servings as one component of a meal.