Elegant Beet Soup With Rye by Tamasin Day-Lewis Elle Magazine

Danial Day-Lewis's sister and close friend of Julia Roberts, this British food star cooks at the cross roads of poetry, parsimony, and pure flavor. Local ingredients and deliriously beautiful guest worthy soup. From March 2010 Elle magazine. "We call March the "hungry gap" in England. Game season isn't over , crops aren't up, so you have to get creative with texture and color," says Day-Lewis. Her cookbook is Supper for a Song.

• Ready In: 1 hr 35 mins
• Serves: 4
• Yields: 6 cups

Ingredients

• 4 -5  beets, medium sized
• 1  small onion, minced
• 1  garlic clove, minced
• 1  teaspoon olive oil
• 5  cups  chicken stock or 5  cups water, heated
• 1  slice  rye bread, stale without the crust
•  plain yogurt
• 1  teaspoon tarragon or 1  teaspoon dill, chopped
•  salt and pepper

Directions

1. preheat oven to 400. Wrap each beet but one in foil. Roast for an hour or until easily pierced. Peel and cut into chunks.
2. Sauté onion and garlic in oil with salt until soft. Add beets and stock or water.
3. Simmer uncovered for five minutes. Remove from heat. Season with black pepper.
4. Add rye bread.
5. Puree the soup in batches in your blender or food processor. (TIP: Take of the plastic part from the middle of the lid or the entire lid and cover the blender with a towel or you will end up with soup EVERYWHERE! The steam will make it explode out of the blender -- if you must know.).
6. Grate remaining raw beet into each bowel. Top with yogurt and tarragon or dill.