Cucumber Gazpacho
3 Comments
Relationships have to be balanced, right? There has to be give and take, yin and yang. Or else the only option is a full-on break-up, messy and tangled.
Which I had with gazpacho a few years ago. I wanted to like it. I tried so hard. I was open and stable. (Well, stable for me.)
But it didn't like me back. Good grief, no relationship is worth a stomach ache. If you remember back to your college days, I'm sure you know what I mean.
Frankly, it's the onions. Raw onions and I don't get along. A little? Fine. But too much? Ugh.
You'd think, being from the American South, I'd be a fan. Every one of my kin eats a big slice of raw onion on a hamburger. For heaven's sake, my paternal grandmother used to go out to the garden, dig up an onion, wash it off with the hose, and eat it like an apple while she weeded and tended the other plants. No lie.
As is so often the case in my life, Bruce to the rescue. He has morphed gazpacho so it and I can have a lovely relationship again. (Does this mean Bruce and I have some sort of open relationship? Um, no. Gazpacho and I have our limits.)
He's made the classic soup with way more cucumbers than normal. Which suits me just fine. I got no beef with cucumbers.
One warning: if you look at that top picture, you'll see this gazpacho is a little soupier than some versions. That's because of the extra cucumbers. Which is fine by me. I like a little soup so that my hunk of crunchy whole-grain bread can "accidentally" fall into the bowl.
So let's get on with it. You'll end up with a lot, about 10 to 12 servings, enough for several meals in the days ahead. (Have lots of crunchy bread on hand, too. Smeared with a little soft goat cheese, it's even better.)
First, quarter and seed 10 large tomatoes. To seed them, get your fingers in the chambers to ream them out. And also squeeze the quarters a bit over the sink. Put them all in a food processor fitted with the chopping blade, then puree them. You'll end up with about 6 cups of tomato puree--which you'll scrape into a large bowl. (By the way, you'll note in the picture that every single seed is not removed--just the vast majority. Life's too short for perfection. Feel free to use that as relationship advice, too.)
Next, you'll need to peel and seed 4 cucumbers. To do so, peel them with a vegetable peeler, then cut them in half lengthwise. Take a flatware spoon, preferably a serrated grapefruit spoon, and run it up the center of the cucumber half, thereby removing all those seeds and their attendant membranes.
Why? Because otherwise, they'll make the gazpacho far too watery. Same reason we seed the tomatoes--not to get rid of the seeds, per se, but mostly to get rid of the watery membranes that attach them to the fruit.
OK, chop 2 of those cucumbers (that is, four seeded halves) into big chunks, put these in the food processor, and puree them. Pour them into the bowl with the tomato puree.
Finely chop the remaining cucumbers into little bits. And here's the secret of great gazpacho: good knife technique. Everything from here on out has to be chopped in similarly-sized bits: think 1/4-inch, tiny bits. Scrape the minced cucumber into the combined purees.
Now the remaining vegetables: 1 small yellow onion, minced (small is the operative word for me); 4 celery ribs, cut into thirds lengthwise, then these spears very finely chopped; 3 small green bell peppers, seeded and minced (look how small our little organic ones are from our CSA--if yours are the bigger grocery store versions, consider using just 1 medium green bell pepper); and 2 garlic cloves put through a garlic press.
Stir these into the bowl with the soup, then add 1/4 cup lemon juice, 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons fragrant olive oil, 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, 1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. (Hey, and note that knife technique in the shot--look at those finely chopped veggies!)
Have I ever told you I make my own Worcestershire sauce? It's never been up on the blog. I've always been afraid I'd scare people away. But maybe it should be.
Anyway, stir it all together, then cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours to blend the flavors, or for up to 4 days.
Although you store it in the fridge, the soup tastes better if it's not quite so chilled--so I like to ladle it into bowls about thirty minutes before I intend to eat it, leaving them out on the counter while the rest goes back into cold storage.
Reader Comments (3)
Sounds terrific -- finally got back from vacation worried my (Colebrook) garden would be dried out and instead found lots of great tomatoes.
Have you ever made (or even tried) watermelon gazpacho? I had it at a lunch place near work last month and loved it, but haven't known what adjustments to make to a gazpacho recipe to accommodate replacing the tomato (or most of it) with watermelon.
P.S. Enjoyed your talk at the Town Hall last month, and was intrigued by your foreshadowing of the goat cookbook.
Hey there. We just made watermelon gazpacho last night. But I didn't write down the recipe. Basically, all watermelon, cucumbers (which are related to watermelons), some bell pepper, some celery, a little onion, then lemon juice, Worcestershire, a splash of vinegar, and salt and pepper. Minced mint wouldn't be bad in there, either.
Anybody have more of a recipe for watermelon gazpacho beyond my simple hint?
(Goat's coming in March. Wait until you see it!)
M.
Sounds good. I have baby watermelons peeking out from under the leaves right now so I'll wait a week or so then give it a try.
Thanks!