Cooksister | Food, Travel, Photography

Food, photos & faraway places

  • HOME
  • ABOUT
    • About me
    • Contact me
    • Work with me
    • Legal
      • Copyright notice & Disclaimer
      • Disclosure
      • Cookies and Privacy Policy
    • Press and media
    • Cooksister FAQs
  • RECIPES
    • Recipe Index – by course
    • Baking (savoury)
    • Braai/Barbecue
    • Breakfast & brunch
    • Christmas
    • Dessert
    • Drinks
    • Eggs
    • Fish
    • Gluten-free
    • Leftovers
    • Pasta & rice
    • Poultry
    • Pulses
    • Salads
    • Soup
    • South African
    • Starters & light meals
    • Vegan
    • Vegetables
    • Vegetarian
  • RESTAURANTS
    • British Isles restaurants
    • Dubai restaurants
    • France restaurants
    • London restaurants
    • Montenegro restaurants
    • New York restaurants
    • Pop-ups and supperclubs
    • Serbia restaurants
    • Singapore restaurants
    • South Africa restaurants
    • Sweden restaurants
    • Switzerland restaurants
    • USA restaurants
  • TRAVEL
    • All my travel posts
      • Austria
      • Belgium
      • Canada
      • Dubai
      • Cruise ships
      • France
      • Germany
      • Greece
      • Grenada
      • Hong Kong
      • Hotel reviews
      • Italy
      • Israel
      • Jersey
      • Mexico
      • Netherlands
      • Norway
      • Portugal
      • Singapore
      • Ski & snow
      • South Africa
      • Spain
      • Sweden
      • Switzerland
      • UK
      • USA
      • Wales
  • PORTFOLIO
    • Freelance writing portfolio
    • Speaking and teaching
    • Photography portfolio
    • Buy my photos
You are here: Home / Recipes / Gluten-free / Warm avocado and biltong soup

Warm avocado and biltong soup

by Jeanne Horak on January 5, 2005 9 Comments in Gluten-free, Soup, South African, Vegetarian

BiltongAvoSoup

Well, as you have probably by now gathered, I’m back from my glorious three weeks under the African sun, tanned, happy and a bit chubbier than when I left!! 😉  I had such a glorious time – saw tons of people, relaxed by the sea rather a lot, ate some wonderful meals, spent time with my family… So in other words, I have a lot of catching up to do!

I do, however, want to get my posts about our trip to France up before I do the South African trip – they are mostly written but need editing – and I still have a few posts from the vaults that need to be put up, of which this is one.  Oh, and for those of you who are interested, I have put up my Oktoberfest photo album – check it out in the sidebar.

Since Anthony over at Spiceblog has started an avocado theme I thought this might be an appropriate time for the following recipe.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently made a South African lunch menu for friends and the starter consisted of avocado and biltong soup.  Having grown up in South Africa, I have never regarded the avocado pear as a great delicacy – I mean, in season you can buy bags containing ten (admittedly not enormous) avocados by the roadside for R10 (less than £!!).  I remember my father scooping the flesh loose from the skin and then mashing the flesh together with salt and pepper to spread on his toast – what a treat that was, but not exactly gourmet fare.  However, since landing here in London, I have become accustomed to the silly prices charged for avocados here and as a result we eat them only as a treat.  The same goes for biltong – in South Africa it is cheap and plentiful, but here it is a delicacy available only from speciality shops.  So avocado and biltong seemed a suitably exotic dish to make for our guests.

Avos

The avocado  gets its name from the Latin American Nahuatl ahuacatl  meaning “testicle,” referring to its shape. (This suggestive shape is possibly also the reason why the Aztecs used avocados as a sexual stimulant…) It was discovered in Mexico in approximately 291 B.C. from where the Spanish brought it to Europe. The more easily-pronouced “avocado” is attributed to Sir Henry Sloane in 1669 – the word itself first appeared in print in the 17th century.  Avocados did not become a commercial crop until the early 1900s and today they are grown in many tropical regions, the largest producers being Mexico, USA, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, South Africa (!) and Spain. A single mature avocado tree can produce more than 400 pieces of fruit in a year!

I have often seen recipes for chilled avocado soup, but I must admit that the idea of chilled soup has never appealed to me.  I mean, soup is associated (in my mind, anyway) with chilly winter evenings and I don’t imagine chilled soup will bring you much pleasure there! (I suspect that the idea behind chilled avocado soup is the fact that avocado becomes bitter if you boil it, so by serving it chilled you avoid this problem.)  Anyway, as a result of my dislike for cold soups I never really bothered with avocado soup until my good friend Peter made me dinner one night and served up a warm avocado soup – I was instantly hooked.  It fulfilled all my criteria for a great recipe:

1.  It’s easy.

2.  It features a raw ingredient I really, really like.

3.  It’s easy.

4.  It’s something a bit out of the ordinary.

5.  It’s easy.

I admit that Peter’s original recipe does not include the biltong, but biltong and avocado have a long tradition of being served together in South African cuisine (biltong and avo salad; steak with biltong and avo topping etc etc).  And besides, having had a soup amuse bouche topped with little lardons while in France, I thought it would certainly add a dash of the exotic for the benefit of our friends…  The soup turned out to be absolutely delicious – even better than I remember.  It was creamy to the point where I was tempted to describe it as an “avocado veloute”, but then I took a step back from the abyss of pretentiousness and stuck with plain old soup 😉

PETER’S WARM AVOCADO SOUP WITH BILTONG (serves 4-6)

Ingredients:

2 large, ripe avocado pears, mashed
1T butter or margerine
1T flour
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups milk
A dash of Tabasco sauce (optional)
Diced biltong and chopped parsley to serve

Method:

 

Peel, stone and mash the avocados, adding a little lemon juice to stop them from going brown.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and when it is melted, stir in the flour to make a paste.  Add the chicken stock bit by bit, stirring to prevent the paste from forming lumps.  After the chicken stock, add the milk and stir.  When the milk has been heated a bit, add the mashed avocado and stir well.  Season to taste with salt, pepper and Tabasco.  Do not let the avocado boil as this will make it taste bitter!  At this stage, I also give the soup a quick whirl with my beloved Braun hand mixer to get it really smooth and creamy.

Dice some biltong (about a tablespoon per serving of soup) into small blocks, chop some fresh parsley and sprinkle on each bowl of soup before serving.

NOTES:

If you add lemon juice to the avocado, go easy on it – you don’t want its taste to  interfere with the soup.  You can substitute vegetable stock for chicken stock if you are cooking for vegetarians.  The Tabasco can also be replaced with a couple of chilli flakes, but both are entirely optional.  If you can’t find biltong, you could also use crispy bacon bits for a similar effect.  The most crucial thing is NOT to let the avocado boil!

More deliciousness for you!

  • Paris food souvenirsParis food souvenirs
  • Saturday Snapshots #235Saturday Snapshots #235
  • Munich Oktoberfest 2004 – Part IMunich Oktoberfest 2004 – Part I
  • Cape Town – a culinary snapshotCape Town – a culinary snapshot

Never miss a Cooksister post

If you enjoyed this post, enter your e-mail address here to receive a FREE e-mail update when a new post appears on Cooksister

I love comments almost as much as I love cheese - so if you can't leave me any cheese, please leave me a comment instead!

« Happy new year!
Sherried mushrooms & egg on toast – End of Month Egg on Toast Extravaganza #2 »

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  1. Reid says

    January 6, 2005 at 7:27 am

    Hi Jeanne,
    The soup looks great! I like avocados and have never had them served as a soup before. This sounds interesting so I’m hoping to try it sometime. By the way, since the biltong is air dried meat, would you say it’s similar to beef jerky, which I believe is dehydrated? In Hawaii we have something similar. It’s called pipikaula. Strips of beef are seasoned with salt and then “hung” out to dry for 1-2 days.

    Reply
  2. Jeanne says

    January 6, 2005 at 11:14 am

    Hi Reid
    Yup, beef jerky or pipikaula both sound as if they would work perfectly – it just adds that bit of salty, spicy oomph to the soup. And if you like avocados, you will *love* this soup – it’s one of my favourites!

    Reply
  3. Ronni Bennett says

    January 7, 2005 at 12:56 pm

    Gonna go buy some avocados today for this soup. Can’t say that I’ve EVER seen biltong here in the U.S., at least by that name. Perhaps what we call “jerky” is the nearly the same.
    Years ago, when I lived in California, I once had avocados growing in the back yard. What a pleasure it was for this extremely urban woman to just go pick one off for lunch or dinner.

    Reply
  4. Jeanne says

    January 7, 2005 at 1:06 pm

    Hi Ronni
    Wow – avocados in the back yard, fresh off the tree. Now that’s my idea of living off the land! I have an avocado plant here in London, grown from an avocado stone, but it is too cold for them outdoors in the UK and apparently they don’t fruit if grown indoors 🙁 So I guess I’ll have to make do with the expensive offerings from abroad. When we move back to South Africa the first two things I will plant will be a fig tree and an avocado tree – mark my words!
    Enjoy the soup!

    Reply
  5. Anel Quilliam says

    January 8, 2005 at 10:14 am

    It is my husband’s birthday today and we have invited our English neighbours for a South Afican evening! Your soup sounds like the perfect starter.

    Reply
  6. Jeanne says

    January 12, 2005 at 10:22 am

    Hi Anel
    Glad you stopped by! The soup makes a great “exotic” starter over here in the UK so your neighbours shoudl be suitably impressed. Let us know how your husband’s birthday dinner went!

    Reply
  7. Max says

    July 21, 2007 at 3:14 pm

    Can any of you lads send me the photo of the soup? I wonder how you make it! )

    Reply
  8. Anon says

    June 12, 2009 at 11:41 am

    http://www.thesavanna.co.uk/recipes/soups.aspx#1
    Hey it the same recipe copied exactly the same and they say its theirs…odd?

    Reply
  9. Johan Kohler says

    April 11, 2010 at 6:57 pm

    So… I discovered warm avocado soup by myself (didn’t think anyone has ever tried it). My soup consisted of butternut, leftover red kidney beans (from a can), and about 1/2 avocado (leftovers that had gone brown), a bit of chicken stock, fresh basil, some leftover coconut milk and some Robertsons “Mixed spice” (cinnamon, cloves, pimento, nutmeg). I boiled the butternut, mashed it up with everthing else (and most of the cooking water too). BUT, I didn’t know you’re not supposed to boil the avo, so it did taste bitter in the end 🙁

    Reply
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Never miss a Cooksister post!

Get my latest recipes delivered by e-mail!

Search over 500 recipes

Recently on Cooksister

  • Perfect broccoli and Stilton soup [keto, low carb, GF]
  • Masalchi by Atul Kochhar – Indian street food in Wembley
  • Barbecued salmon with blood oranges and capers
  • Roasted Brussels sprouts with feta, pomegranate and pine nuts [GF, V]
  • Love Yourself healthy meal delivery [Review]
  • Antillean
  • Festive roast lamb with pomegranate glaze
  • Rustic blood orange and pistachio galettes

Archives by month

Archives by category

Popular posts

Peppermint Crisp fridge tart - a South African treat
Nigella's Bakewell slices & the Big Bakewell Taste-off
Oxtail and red wine potjie
Gem squash 101: how to find them, how to grow them, how to eat them!
Roosterkoek - a South African braai essential
My big, fat South African potato bake

Featured on

Also available on

The wonderful Museum of the Moon installation - a The wonderful Museum of the Moon installation - a 7 metre diameter scale model of the moon suspended in the Painted Hall at the  @oldroyalnavalcollege in Greenwich this week, by @lukejerramartist. A surreal and fabulous sight!
Do you enjoy free art installations? Then you need Do you enjoy free art installations? Then you need to get down to @canarywharflondon between now and Saturday 28 Jan to catch the free Winter Lights 2023 event, back for the seventh year.

My favourites include @lukejerramartist ‘s Floating Earth; Tom Lambert’s Out of the Dark; Fluorescent Firs; Toroid by This is Loop; and the surreal and mesmerising Anima by MEATS - a tunnel filled with hundreds of thin optical fibre lights that change colour and move in the breeze 😍 

Have you been to Winter Lights? What was your favourite?
“When we look down at the Earth from space, we s “When we look down at the Earth from space, we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet. It looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also, at the same time, looks extremely fragile.” - International Space Station astronaut Ron Garamond

To experience the “overview effect” (a phenomenon experienced by astronauts viewing the earth from space), head down to Canary Wharf in the London docklands this week where you can see @lukejerramartist ‘s beautiful Floating Earth installation as part of the Winter Lights event. 

This giant 10m diameter installation is created using high resolution NASA images to create a floating scale model of the Earth, lit from within so that it glows from its current home on the Middle Dock, surrounded by the headquarters of international banking and finance corporations.

The artist hopes that viewed in this context, the installation will make visitors and the bankers working in surrounding buildings question how their money in savings and pensions is invested, and whether investments can be greener.

Aside from being a thought provoking piece, it is also mesmerising and surreally beautiful, so make sure you visit the free Winter Lights event before ends on Saturday 28 Jan.
Happy lunar new year! [Invited] To celebrate the Happy lunar new year! 

[Invited] To celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Rabbit, why not head over to @mamachensdumplings currently doing a residence at the @thegantrylondon in #stratford where you can feast on prawn & chive dumplings; pork, Chinese cabbage and shiitake mushroom dumplings; pork & prawn wontons with Mama Chen’s chilli oil; vegetable dumplings; smacked cucumber salad; and spicy noodles coated in garlic and Szechuan pepper oil.

And afterwards, make sure you head up to the @unionsocialoc bar for a cocktail - I loved the Moreish Fashion with bourbon, PX sherry, chestnuts and mandarin orange bitters!
Got leftover Stilton (or any blue cheese) from Chr Got leftover Stilton (or any blue cheese) from Christmas? Turn it into this super simple and super indulgent broccoli and Stilton soup! So easy to make and soooo delicious to eat - and it is low carb and GF. What more could you want?! Click the link in my bio for the full recipe. What’s your favourite soup?
CELEBRATE. So the fireworks are over, the champag CELEBRATE.

So the fireworks are over, the champagne is finished and the leftovers are all eaten. We are one week into 2023 and I have had some time to think about what my intent is for the year. 

In 2022 my brother had a life saving kidney transplant. Since the operation, he has had a Peanuts cartoon as his WhatsApp profile pic, where Charlie Brown and Snoopy are sitting on a pier talking. Charlie says “Some day, we all die Snoopy.” And Snoopy replies: “Yes - but every other day, we will live.”

Waking up in the morning is a gift, every day, and it is so easy to forget this. The last few years have been difficult for so many people and the coming year promises its own challenges. But every day that we don’t die is a day to live, to celebrate life in some small way.

So my intention in 2023 is to celebrate. Celebrate our achievements however small. Celebrate our friends and family. Celebrate small things. Celebrate life.

Did you make any resolutions or goals for 2023? I would love to hear them in the comments! Wishing you all the very best for 2023 🥂
Happy new year, everyone! Here are some scenes fro Happy new year, everyone! Here are some scenes from last night with friends in Deptford. My deconstructed avocado ritz; @twinkleparkstephen ‘s bobitie; Giles’ Ottolenghi tomato salad; and Jean’s clementine trifle - and the London night sky ablaze with fireworks!  How did you spend your evening? 🥂🎇🎆
Merry Christmas to all those celebrating - I hope Merry Christmas to all those celebrating - I hope your day was merry and bright, filled with family, friends and love 🎄🥂. Mine was spent alone at home - my choice and the result of a combination of Covid (not mine!) and rail strikes 🤦‍♀️ but very relaxing and indulgent!
Looking for a stylish and easy Christmas starter y Looking for a stylish and easy Christmas starter you can make ahead? Look no further than my individual smoked salmon terrine! Hot smoked salmon, cream cheese and chives wrapped in cold smoked salmon in a ramekin. Still one of the most popular Christmas recipes in my blog, it looks cheffy but is soooo simple to make - and will save you time and effort on the day! Get the recipe by clicking on the link in my bio.

How is your Christmas meal prep going? Are you entertaining at home or going to friends or family? 🎄🥂🎄🥂🎄
Load More... Follow me on Instagram

Follow Jeanne Horak-Druiff's board Recipes by Cooksister on Pinterest.

Cooksister

The South African Food and Wine Blog Directory

The South African Food and Wine Blog Directory

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Jeanne Horak is a freelance food and travel writer; recipe developer and photographer. South African by birth and Londoner by choice, Jeanne has been writing about food and travel on Cooksister since 2004. She is a popular speaker on food photography and writing has also contributed articles, recipes and photos to a number of online and print publications. Jeanne has also worked with a number of destination marketers to promote their city or region. Please get in touch to work with her Read More…

Latest Recipes

Bowls of broccoli and Stilton soup
Salmon with blood oranges dill and capers
Brussels sprouts with feta and pomegranate
Roast lamb with pomegranate glaze
Blood orange & pistachio galettes
Cauliflower topped steak with melted cheese
Plate of potted smoked salmon with slaw and a glass of champagne
bowls of pistachio pomegranate bircher muesli

SITEMAP

Home

Contact

About me

Recipe Index

Restaurant Index

Copyright & Disclaimer

Cookies & privacy policy




blog counter

© 2004 - 2023 · Jeanne Horak unless otherwise stated - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You may not reproduce any text, excerpts or images without my prior permission. Site by RTW Labs

Copyright © 2023 · Cooksister on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Cooksister cookie consent
We use cookies to ensure you receive the best experience on our site. If you continue to use this site, you are agreeing to our terms and conditions. Accept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT