Vasaaq! June’s finally here and that means it’s gazpacho season! What better way to enjoy all of that spring and summer produce on a hot day than with a refreshingly cold cup of soup. In the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the Creamy Heart Soup is just that. For the uninitiated, a gazpacho is a cold soup made primarily with tomatoes and/or watermelon along with several other raw vegetables and herbs all blended together and eaten fresh.

Although it can be made in any cooking pot throughout Hyrule, as far as it’s implied in game the Creamy Heart Soup is a specialty of the dessert dwelling Gerudo tribe. Indeed many of the in game ingredients necessary for the soup can be found growing in their sweltering climate.  Link has the opportunity to learn how to make this dish if he happens to wander into Ashai’s evening cooking class

Hmm… I was planning on creamy heart soup for the lesson today, but I’m being a bit forgetful, it seems. I know that I need some fresh milk, one voltfruit, one hydromelon, and two heart-shaped vegetables… I just can’t recall what the heart-shaped vegetable was…

Spoilers: The vegetables are Hearty Radishes :p.

So Hydromelons = watermelons I get, but two things had me scratching my head when it came to developing this recipe. One, what is a “Voltfruit” and two, how am I going to put milk in a gazpacho!? I suppose I should clarify for anyone that may not be familiar, but a gazpacho is a cold fruit and vegetable soup and not one that would ever really include dairy. In my research I actually found that creamy gazpachos DO exist, but their creaminess comes from almonds or other nuts being ground up with the soup, not actual cream. Oh boy, this was going to be tougher than I thought.

As for the Voltfruit, once I came across one in the game it was fairly clear that it was representative of a real life pitaya or dragon fruit. The red color, spiky tips, and the fact that they are found growing on cactuses all point to this. To be honest, I was a little bummed out at this realization as I’ve personally never had a great experience with dragon fruit. To put it bluntly, they’re a let down. It just looks so cool sitting there at the Asian market looking like it’s from some alien world. It’s expensive, but you just can’t resist its neon colored allure. You cut it open to reveal a beautiful white interior flecked with tiny black seeds. You can’t resist taking a bite and… it’s just not that flavorful. Moral of the story is: you can’t judge a fruit by its rind.

All that being said, it was actually pretty good in this application , so no hard feelings, dragon fruit. At least you weren’t as much of a puzzle as the milk haha. To be perfectly honest it was difficult for me to add milk to this recipe. There are a lot of delicate flavors going on in here (dragon fruit included) that end up getting masked when too much fat is added. So I tried my best to include just enough milk to promote the “creamy” quality of the soup without sacrificing the vegetal quality. This is a dilemma I often face when working on this blog and how acurate I want to be to the game. So I leave it to you, dear readers, to milk or not to milk.

All my griping aside (sorry!) I’m really pleased with how the soup turned out. These are definitely ingredients I wouldn’t have thought to put together if not for the game, but hey, that’s the whole point of this thing right!? All it really requires is a knife and a food processor, so whether you’re a Voe or a Vai, I hope you’ll give this Creamy Heart Soup a try! Sarqso!

+ Heart Soup Gazpacho +

Makes a little over 1 quart of soup

ITEMS

EQUIP

• Food Processor
• Sharp knife and a cutting board
• Small frying pan
• Melon baller (optional, for garnish)

WALKTHROUGH

1) This recipe’s so quick, once you’ve gathered all of your ingredients it’s already half over! Well, not quite, but we do let the food processor do most of the work for this. The one thing we want to do ahead of time is prep our veggies.

2) For the watermelon, slice a small portion off of one of the ends with a sharp knife and place it cut end down. This helps keep the melon from rolling around while you slice it in half from end to end. Continuing to cut lengthwise, cut each half of watermelon in half again, and then once more to end up with eight wedges total. You should now be able to slide the knife easily between the red and white areas of the melon. Once the rind is removed, cut the melon in to large chunks. We need 1 quart for this recipe, but you can save the rest for garnish or just to munch on while you prep.

3) Raw radishes have a distinct peppery quality that can be softened by cooking them before adding them to the soup. Cut the radishes in half and then slice them thin before throwing them in a small frying pan on medium high heat. Cook them until they  become translucent and the red color begins to dull. Remove them from the hot pan and set them aside to cool.

4) Our volt… or should I day dragon fruit can be prepared by slicing it in half and using a large spoon to scoop out the insides. Finish up the knife work by chopping the cucumber and red pepper into small pieces.

5) Now with our fruits and veggies prepped we can load all of the ingredients into the bowl of your food processor and buzz it up. A lot of gazpacho recipes use a blender at this point, but I’m kind of partial to the chunkier texture this yields. Again, if you’re not really into adding milk, feel free to omit it, you can always stir it in later if you’d like. I hope you enjoy this refreshing soup either way!

Hey! Thanks for reading all the the way to the end! You’re awesome :D! If you haven’t already and are looking for more nerdy food stuff, consider following me on Twitter, Facebook, tumblr and Instagram. I post a lot of work in progress pictures for the blog as well as stuff from my Twitch streams. If that sounds like something you’d be into, please check out those links above! Anyway, take care everyone and I’ll see you soon with an all-new recipe!

– Bryan