Less Fuss More Flavor: Quick & Easy Gazpacho (Cold Tomato Vegetable Soup) Recipe

Gazpacho: Healthy, Lowfat, Refreshing, & No Cooking Required

We do a lot of seasonal eating here on the farm, but seasonal recipe blogging is a whole other thing. Now that the sweltering days of summer are thankfully over, I realize that a refreshing bowl of chilled soup might not be at the top of your Must Eat List right now. It was 39 degrees outside this morning, and I know I'm planning on making a pot of my favorite Broccoli Onion Garbanzo Bean Soup and a new onion rye bread I've been working on.

If you've already moved into cozy comfort food mode—or tomato time is over in your area—you might want to check out my hot soup recipes, or the Slow Roasted Dutch Oven Lamb Shoulder Roasts & Shanks (which I wrote about a month ago when turning on the oven for three hours was unthinkable) and just bookmark the gazpacho until next year. Or you can always go straight to the cute animal photos instead!

It's funny how you can go so long without ever hearing or knowing about something, and then once you do you're instantly bombarded by it. That's what happened to me a while back with sherry wine vinegar. I'd never heard of it before, saw it listed in a recipe, and then suddenly it seemed like half the recipes I came across during the next couple of weeks were calling for the stuff—which I still haven't been able to find for sale anywhere.

Then it was the phrase 'my bad.' I saw a book of cute animal photos in a catalog called I'm Sorry. . .My Bad!, couldn't figure out the title, and the next thing I knew I was hearing my bad everywhere—including in a seven-year-old movie I'd already watched twice.

Lately it's been gazpacho. Of course I was already familiar with this cold soup, but I'd never actually made or tasted it. Back in August I was served some during a Sunday brunch with friends, and after one dainty slurp I was hooked.

"This would be the perfect thing to keep in the fridge all summer long!" I exclaimed, and immediately demanded the recipe. The hostess opened up a battered copy of Mollie Katzen's beloved Moosewood Cookbook and proceeded to tell me how she'd personalized the recipe over the years, including stirring in a little yogurt and garnishing it with a dollop of sour cream.

That afternoon the gazpacho flood began. I found a recipe for it sitting in my e-mail inbox when I got back to the farm. And another one in a magazine I flipped through that evening. Gazpacho was suddenly everywhere on the web, and I discovered my foodie pal Finny had just whipped up a batch using tomatoes from her garden. On and on it went. I took this as a big red sign and dove in.

Gazpacho is, according to Saveur magazine, "the definitive Andalusian dish, and—with the possible exception of paella—Spain's most famous culinary export." I've also learned that it has approximately three million variations.

The basic idea is that you combine bread, olive oil, and vinegar with some other ingredients (often fresh tomatoes and cucumbers), blend it up (or not), and serve the resulting mixture chilled. But just what are the other ingredients?

During some quick research I found recipes that called for—are you ready?—all of the following things: tomato juice, V8 juice, fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, stale bread, bread crumbs, cucumbers, green peppers, yellow peppers, red peppers, piquillo peppers, jalapeno peppers, chopped green chiles, radishes, leeks, garlic, celery, white onions, yellow onions, red onions, scallions, shallots, olive oil, vegetable oil, dry white wine, white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, tarragon vinegar, sherry wine vinegar, lime juice, lemon juice, lemon zest, unflavored gelatin, green olives with pimientos, chicken stock, a beef bouillon cube, chipotle chiles in adobo, sugar, maple syrup, honey, Tabasco sauce, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, paprika, cumin, basil, oregano, tarragon, chervil, chives, cilantro, dill, ginger, parsley, yogurt, sour cream, fava beans, avocado, almonds, green grapes, crab meat, zucchini, and water. Water?

The June 2008 issue of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food (I love this magazine!) has a Tropical Gazpacho made with mangoes, cucumbers, and buttermilk. In The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook, authors Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins included a recipe for Green Gazpacho that calls for arugula, watercress, yogurt, and three raw eggs. In The New Basics Cookbook, they offer up a more traditional version and admit that they've been known to add a bit of vodka to their mugs "so that it becomes a Spanish Bloody Mary," which I thought sounded like a very good idea.

Gazpacho garnishes ran from chopped tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and onions to black olives and chopped hard-boiled eggs. Croutons were mentioned all over the place.

Ultimately I decided to go the very simple route with both ingredients and technique. I've never understood the common practice of adding purchased tomato juice to gazpacho when you could just use more fresh tomatoes instead, which is what I did. I skipped the traditional stale bread, went easy on the olive oil (one recipe I found called for 1-1/2 cups!), and used white balsamic vinegar because that was what I had on hand.

There's no need to blanch, peel, seed, or force anything through a sieve in my version. I wasn't trying for traditional, but I did leave out the gelatin, shrimp, and raw eggs. Besides being delicious, this gazpacho also happens to be extremely good for you.

So what do you like to put in your gazpacho?

Some People Refer to Gazpacho as Liquid Salad

Susan's Simple Gazpacho
Makes about 6 cups (48 ounces)

While flavorful, vine-ripened tomatoes are of the utmost importance here, this is a perfect opportunity to use up those not-so-perfect-looking specimens you might have hanging around. Try to make this soup a day ahead, as the flavor increases dramatically after sitting overnight in the fridge. As always, I urge you to seek out local and organic ingredients whenever you can.

2-1/2 pounds tomatoes (about 8 medium), preferably heirloom and organic, chopped
2 medium cucumbers (about 13 ounces), chopped
2 small sweet red peppers (about 8 ounces), cored and chopped
1 yellow or white onion (about 8 ounces), chopped
3 to 4 cloves garlic (1 heaping Tablespoon), finely chopped
1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons honey
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper

Optional:
yogurt
sour cream

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Blend in small batches until smooth, combine, and stir well. (If you like a chunkier gazpacho, you could probably make this in a food processor insted of a blender.) Let sit several hours or overnight in the fridge. Serve chilled, with a little yogurt stirred in and/or a dollop of sour cream on top if desired. Will keep for three to four days.

Still hungry for summer?
Fresh Tomato Pizza Sauce
Savory Tomato Pesto Biscuit Crust Pie
Tomato Pesto Pizza, My Basil Pesto Recipe, & A Simple Tomato Salad
Purple Basil Pesto & White Bean Dip
Three No-Cook Summer Recipes: Mexican Jumping Bean Slaw, Easy Vegetarian Tacos, & High Kickin' Creamy Tomato Dressing
Cream Cheese & Tomato Sandwiches On Italian Black Olive Cheeks
The Easiest Greek Salad Ever
My Seven Second Tomato Glut Solution
Colors Of Summer Salad
Summer In A Bowl
Saving the Harvest: Salsa-Like Green Tomato Relish

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where the mornings may be nice and nippy (hooray for polarfleece season!), but our late-planted tomatoes and cucumbers in the kitchen garden are just now at their peak, and since putting up portable electric fencing is still hot and sweaty work even if it is only in the 70s outside, I see at least one more batch of refreshingly cool gazpacho being whizzed up in our early October future.