Summer sensations

For some customers - particularly male ones - the idea of summer soup can be a total turn-off. Somehow they have got stuck with the idea that summer soups are bland and nurseryish - like vichyssoise and chilled cucumber - and they avoid them like the plague.

But in the past couple of years summer soups have received a real shot in the arm from the return to a more robust, less precious style of cooking and the growing British love affair with the Far East.

Think of soups such as summer minestrone or pappa al pomodoro from London's River Café or the seriously addictive Thai chicken and coconut soup and you realise you are on to a winner.

Philip Britten of Knightsbridge's Capital Hotel believes you can give a distinctively summery feel to soup without chilling it down. His summer soup menu is based on broths and bouillons such as the bouillon of turnip which he serves with pine nuts and girolles. It is, he says, exceptionally easy to make. "You just need loads of grated turnip. Cook it with butter, salt and water then strain it off. You get the most amazing flavour."

Britten believes chefs shouldn't overlook the good basic seasonal produce such as turnips and watercress which are available to them. "Everything is so fresh, young and tender at this time of year. That's why I don't like using cream in avegetable soup. You should use your vegetables to enhance the flavour - cream generally takes the flavour out. You also need to take care to preserve the colour of the vegetables you're using," headvises. "Always add boiling water or stock rather than cold and cook them for as short a time as possible."

Gordon Ramsay, chef-patron of Chelsea restaurant Aubergine, has included several summery soups in his forthcoming book Passion for Flavour, which is published later this year. They include a tomato and basil consommé, and a rhubarb gazpacho. Like Britten, Ramsay favours light soups and broths which he believes fit in with the increasing demand for light but flavoursome food. "It's a clean, healthy way of eating. With a soup course you can get through three courses without having to lie down afterwards."

Chef of the Year David Everitt-Matthias of Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham says soup makes economic sense for the smaller restaurant - and pleases the customer. "Soup is an ideal amuse bouche. At the moment we have a cold brandade soup that I'm serving with a little chive oil. It comes free so customers feel they are getting something for nothing and it's a way of using ingredients that are not too expensive."

For country restaurants soups can be the perfect vehicle for showing off the quality of their home-grown produce. At the Croque-en-Bouche in Malvern Wells chef Marion Jones always includes a soup course in her set five-course dinner.

Currently on the menu are a smoked salmon soup with tomato, celery and lovage - "The lovage has just come up and is beautifully tender," says Marion - and a split pea soup with leek and wild garlic with "a few shredded mange-tout" floating on top. "I love green soups - we also do one made with celtuce, a cross between celery and lettuce, which I mix with cos lettuces and young peas and flavour with summer savory which gives it a lovely peppery taste."

Yvonne Thompson of Cobwebs restaurant in Leck, Lancashire, is another chef who finds soup sells well. Her trademark is a "split soup bowl" with the soup poured in two separate halves either side of a plastic divider. For summer she likes to do carrot and orange with cauliflower and parmesan. "People are always amazed at how we do it but I think you have to offer something a bit out of the ordinary with soup or people tend to think you've just whizzed up all the leftover vegetables you had from the day before."

Jonathan Harrison, chef de cuisine of the Swallow Hotel, Birmingham, agrees soup needs theatre. "Guests like to see what they're going to get in it. When we serve our pea soup, for instance, we put a few fresh peas and fèves in the bottom of the bowl and pour the soup over at table. Then we add a little green quenelle made with whipped cream coloured with chlorophyll and a chiffonade of mint. Last summer we did a very successful summer mushroom soup made with fresh morels and girolles which we served with a small herb salad, a warm rabbit rillette, caramelised tomatoes and some chargrilled olive oil bread."

Most of this summer's new ideas seem to revolve around finishes and garnishes. The cappuccino effect is still popular: Bruno Loubet at L'Odéon, for instance, is garnishing a watercress soup with a green peppercorn "froth".

Few chefs, however, have exploited the idea of soup as a dessert, a strikingly distinctive idea that can work brilliantly with summer fruits. Terry Laybourne of 21 Queen Street in Newcastle upon Tyne has a recipe for a "minestrone" of fruits with a mascarpone sorbet - a dazzling combination of summer fruits with carrots and courgettes poached in a vanilla syrup, served in a clear strawberry juice. Maybe that's next summer's Big Idea.