
Beautiful Soup (Vegetable Soup With Beets, Dill and Orange Zest)
This is a sweet and buttery tomato-onion soup that evolved, many years ago, toward a kind of borscht, but stopped short. Borscht tastes too earthy for my palate. Tomatoes and orange keep the flavor a bit brighter and more acidic. The name comes from the colors: orange carrots, carnelian tomatoes, magenta beets. I serve it at home, at least twice each winter, with snow-white dollops of sour cream floating on top. It looks wonderful, tastes good, and is very healthful. And without my needing to say a word about mincing or dicing, it teaches my children about the satisfaction of a job well done.
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