Gazpacho

Gazpacho

I made gazpacho for the first time in my life yesterday. Now that I live in Spain and I made it once I guess you could say that I’m kind of an expert on the subject of this cold, tomato soup. I have heard it described as a liquid salad which sounds more accurate than calling it soup. What I can say with authority is that it’s really good and it’s almost impossible to screw up. What more do you want out of a menu item?

Since I have adopted a Castillian accent to my Spanish I now pronounce this simple yet wonderful dish gath pacho. I know, don’t you just want to punch me right in the face? Of course, that would be a little difficult for you unless you finally decide to get your ass over here for a visit, so until you do I will keep annoying the living shit out of you. Did you know that the French for gazpacho is le gazpacho? Wow, I could almost feel the air from your punch against my nose. Nice try.

It has been hot here lately with temperatures in the upper 30’s (I knew the metric system would piss you off, too. Keep swinging like that and you’re going to tire yourself out before the end of this essay). It’s hot but not Florida hot. It hasn’t been humid at all but 39 degrees is definitely hot enough to push you towards lighter, cooler foods. Not me, of course, I’m too much of a glutton to ever actually crave lighter foods. I once ate an entire bucket of fried chicken while in a Turkish bath. I just figured that since I was in Spain and it is summer I may as well make a batch of gath pacho.

All of the produce markets are up to their eyebrows in good tomatoes right now so I got four big, juicy rambo tomatoes. I don’t know why they call them rambo but I suspect it is because they like Sylvester Stallone. You need a cucumber and here they come in little pint-size versions that are about half the size of an American cucumber. The recipe calls for a bit of bread so I bought some of this five seed whole wheat stuff they sell at the supermarket. I rarely eat the bakery baguette variety of bread. It can be interesting when it is fresh from the oven but decidedly uninteresting shortly after this initial freshness has passed. This recipe calls for the bread to be soaked in water which would leave the baguette bread completely lifeless so I opted for the five seed hippy bread.

Gazpacho

- 4 tomatoes (peeled and chopped)
- 1 onion (chopped)
- 1 cucumber (peeled and chopped)
- 1 garlic clove (diced)
- 1 red pepper (seeded and chopped)
- Bread (I used three slices of the 5 seed stuff. Soak it in water briefly and then squeeze out the water)

I had a zucchini lying around (or aubergines as the Brits call them. That’s a good punch you’re packing there—for a little girl!) so I peeled it and cooked it in boiling water for a few minutes.

Salt, pepper, a dash of cumin, a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and a few dashes of red wine vinegar (No, not balsamic).

I just threw all of this together in a pot with a bit of water and then liquefied it with my 750cc, 105 horsepower hand mixer. No kidding, this thing is powerful. Most recipes call for you to strain the soup in a food mill after mixing but mine was completely liquefied. I chilled all of the ingredients before so it was ready to eat as soon as I finished mixing.

I prefer to drink gazpacho out of a glass instead of treating it like a soup and trying to use a spoon. So you kids out there fighting over whether gazpacho is a beverage or a soup just break it up. It’s both.

There are hundreds of variations on this dish but I think this is one of the more traditional recipes.