Pear Soup (Recipe adapted from Armando Scannone) Makes 4 portions.

Ingredients 4 cups water 2 Tbsp vinegar 3 pears, about 1 kg, not too ripe 2 Tbsp butter 1/3 cup onion, finely chopped 2-3 sprigs fresh thyme or tsp, if thyme is dry ground 1 tsp prepared mustard 1 tsp salt 1/16 tsp ground nutmeg 1/8 tsp ground pepper 1 Tbsp cornstarch 2 cups vegetable broth 1 piece of celery stalk of approximately 10 cm cup heavy cream for whipping Some basil leaves and sweet peppers, without veins and seeds, for decoration Preparation 1. Put the water and vinegar in a bowl. Peel each pear and immediately, so that they do not darken, cut into pieces and remove core and seeds. Put pear pieces into bowl. 2. Put butter, onion, thyme, mustard, salt, nutmeg, pepper and cornstarch in a pot and cook, always stirring, until onion is transparent, about four minutes. 3. Add the broth, celery and pears to the pot, bring to a boil and cook until pears soften and can be perforated with a needle, about 2-3 minutes. 4. Remove the thyme sprigs and celery, and put the rest in the container of a blender, and blend finely and strain with a fine-mesh colander. 5. Return the strained soup to the clean pot and stir in the heavy cream and bring to boil, and at medium heat cook for about two minutes. Strain again. 6. The soup can be served immediately in cups, decorated with the basil and sweet peppers but we recommend to serve chilled, for which you let it cool and then put in the refrigerator for about two hours until the moment to be served, and then decorate with the basil and sweet peppers. You can make the same soup with melon: the ingredients are the same except that you use 1 kg melon pulp, and then you add a 3 cm piece of ginger, halved, to the onion mixture (in step 2), use a little more celery (15 cm piece), and instead of basil, you decorate the soup with chopped chives and sweet peppers.