Pepper Rainbow Soup

6 c Chicken broth

1 md Onion, chopped

2 c Rice, cooked

4 Bell peppers, in

-assorted colors 1/2 ts Savory

2 ts Chives

2 Egg yolks

2 tb Lemon juice

Salt and pepper, -to taste

Bring the broth to a boil. Cook the rice. Chop the onion and saute the pieces until they are golden brown. Add to the broth. Add the savory and chives to the broth. Clean the seeds and cores from the peppers and chop the cleaned peppers into pieces. Set chopped peppers aside. Add the rice to the broth and cook for 5 minutes. Add the chopped peppers to the boiling broth and simmer for 1 minute. Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks in a 2-cup bowl. Thicken the soup with the egg yolks by adding the hot soup to the beaten yolks a little bit at a time, stirring constantly, until a cup or two of soup has been added to the yolks. Dump this mixture back into the simmering broth. Add the lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve. NOTES: * A light summer soup with multicolored peppers -- Every year in late summer, produce counters fill with multicolored bell (capsicum) peppers. Green bell peppers, red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers. Even purple bell peppers. Creative chefs try hard to take advantage of the splash of colors, and make rainbow salads or rainbow appetizers. Here is a different way to rejoice in multicolored peppers: pepper soup. The peppers float to the top of a light broth and artfully Serves 6-8. * The thickening technique is identical to that used in avgolemono recipes, which you can consult for more details. * The flavor and texture balance of the soup depends on the amount that the peppers are cooked. The more you cook them, the more their flavor exudes into the broth but the more they lose their texture. I find that about 2 minutes in simmering broth is the right amount. * You can have fun with colored geometric patterns as you cut the peppers. They don`t have to be chunks. You can cut the yellow peppers into circles and the green peppers into long strips and the red peppers into cross sections and the purple peppers into stocky triangles. Be creative. The colored shapes will float to the top of the broth and play hide-and-seek with each other. : Difficulty: moderate (egg yolk thickening and pepper cooking require some practice). : Time: 10 minutes preparation, 10 minutes cooking. : Precision: No need to measure. : Brian Reid : DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, California, USA : decwrl!reid -or- [email protected] : Copyright (C) 1986 USENET Community Trust