Fruit Soup

Jacques Pepin cleverly uses strawberry jam and black currant liqueur to sweeten this dessert. He stirs them into white wine, then adds plums, cherries, grapes and berries and quickly poaches them. Basil adds a light, savory note. You can make this soup the day before a dinner party and store it in the fridge overnight. 

Chef Jason Franey of Seattle's Canlis makes this sweet and tangy summer soup by marinating fresh peaches overnight with dried apricots, honey, vinegar and olive oil and then pureeing the mixture. Since peaches can vary in flavor, Franey suggests seasoning with vinegar to taste as you puree.

Traditional Hungarian chilled sour cherry soup is sweet enough to be a dessert. Nicolaus Balla blends fennel into his more savory version and serves the beautiful pink soup as a first course. "Fennel might be my favorite vegetable," he says.

"Watermelon juice has such a mild flavor that most thickeners would overpower its taste," says chef Jamie Bissonnette of Coppa in Boston. "But xanthan allows me to turn it into a soup."

This cool, sweet-tangy riff on the Spanish staple was inspired by an abundance of watermelons from a farm on the island.

Combining fresh tomato juice and orange juice, this cold soup was inspired by sangrita--the zippy Mexican drink typically served at bars as a tequila chaser. "I love how the tomato and orange juices combine to form an entirely new flavor," Marcia Kiesel says. For fun, add a shot glass or two of silver tequila.