For the chilled beet top stock:

1. Find fresh young beets with nice green tops. Separate bulbs, wash and dry them whole and unpeeled, and dress with a little oil, salt, and pepper. Wrap them tightly in foil and roast them at 350 degrees until they’re tender, 2 to 3 hours. Peel and grate.
2. While the beet bulbs are roasting, prepare the tops by washing and cutting them into 1-inch pieces – stems and leaves.
3. Sauté the stems and leaves on high heat using just a little oil, seasoning as soon as the tops are in the pan. After the leaves start wilting when being tossed in the hot pan for a minute or so, add a little garlic and lemon juice, toss, and cover the pan for 1 minute. Uncover, cook for one more minute, and flood the pan with 2 cups of stock. Bring to a light simmer, (and if available) add 1 cup of beet kvass, and immediately take off heat and let cool. Our aim is to cook the beets, but preserve their bright color with a soup that will eventually be somewhere between a deep pink to magenta in color.

For the soup:

1. Grate your trimmed radishes. Peel your cucumber, remove the seeds if it’s a large or mature cucumber, and grate.
2. In a bowl, add 1 quart of plain yogurt, 2 cups of your cooled grated beets (and any beet juice or roasting jus left in the foil), 2 cups of your chilled beet top stock, the radish and cucumber, a small bunch of chopped chive and dill, 2 freshly minced garlic cloves, salt, pepper, sugar if it’s not yet slightly sweet, and lemon juice.
3. Balance the soup so that it remains fairly thick, sweet, sour, and refreshing. Let it marry together in the fridge for at least an hour.
4. Finish in small soup bowls with more chopped chive and dill on top. Serve chilled. Great for up to 3 to 5 days.