Gazpacho

The warm days in Philadelphia keep on coming, so I think it’s time to attempt making the summer favorite: gazpacho. I wanted to do an heirloom gazpacho, but I am presently cooking out of Wilmington and the local store does not carry any. Sigh. I used this recipe from Cooking Light and just changed some of the ingredients to fit what I could find in the store.

Ingredients:

2 seeded peeled cucumbers, plus 1 for garnish

1 chopped Vidalia or other sweet onion

1 coarsely chopped red bell pepper

6 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon extravirgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

6 large tomatoes, chopped seeded & peeled

1 garlic clove, minced

1 finely chopped yellow pepper, for garnish

1 finely chopped orange pepper, for garnish

1 finely chopped tomatillo, for garnish

8 pieces of garlic bread (optional)

To begin, prepare all of your ingredients. Peel and seed 2 cucumbers. To learn how to seed a cucumber, check out my post here. Roughly chop the onion and red bell pepper. To peel a tomato, prepare a bowl with ice water and bring another pot of water to a boil.

On the bottom side of the tomatoes, cut an X into the skin.

When the water is boiling, place 2 tomatoes at a time into the water.

Keep in the water for 15 to 20 seconds, remove, and place in the ice water.

Once cooled, use a knife to peel away the skin from the X.

Repeat with remaining tomatoes.

To seed the tomato, cut the tomato in half and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds. Discard the seeds and roughly chop the tomatoes.

To make the gazpacho, combine first 9 ingredients (up to the garlic).

Add 1/3 of the mixture to a food processor and blend until smooth. Pour into a large bowl and repeat with the remaining 2/3 vegetable mixture. Cover and chill.

When ready to serve, spoon gazpacho into bowls. Finely chop your yellow and orange peppers and tomatillo. Combine the peppers and tomatillo.

Add 2 tablespoons of the mixture to each bowl. If you’d like, you can also add a piece of garlic bread (or just a crusty piece of day old bread), 1 tablespoon goat cheese, or a teaspoon of sour cream.

This would also be a nice appetizer. Pour the gazpacho into shooter glasses and top with a teaspoon of the pepper tomatillo mixture.

You can also use the gazpacho as a pureed salsa. Prepare garlic bread. Put on a plate with a bowl of gazpacho in the center with a spoon. Guests can spoon gazpacho on top of the bread, or use the bread to dip into the gazpacho.