Gazpacho!!

Fresh tomatoes are everywhere right now. The crops are in & this is one of many delicious ways to use them! I went to my local farmers market yesterday & asked them for ripe tomatoes that they had behind the table..since most people don’t want to buy soft ripe tomatoes unless they are planning on using them right away. I wanted to make this cold tomato soup NOW so needed those tomatoes ripe & juicy!

They found 2 lbs of wonderful tomatoes that I could use for this Gazpacho! I have made a different recipe for about a million years…but wanted to try a new one. There are many Gazpacho recipes on the internet. I was trying to decide between one from Gordan Ramsey or Bon Appetit… my friend Marcia told me to make the one from Bon Appetit, which I did, & now I will share some with her!!

This recipe was so simple to make. just delicious fresh ingredients blended together. There isn’t any raw onion in this soup, there is a shallot.. so the onion flavour is not over-powering. Also, the garlic isn’t over-powering either… The soup is blended & then can be strained before serving through a sieve. Murray is used to a chunky gazpacho, so I blended 1/2 to a fairly smooth texture, then when I blended the other half..I left it a bit chunkier. This way there is some ‘chewing’ factor to this soup which should satisfy Murray!!

Inspired by the recipe on Bon Appetit….I made some changes

Here is the recipe 

Ingredients

1 English cucumber

1/2 red pepper, remove seeds & stem

2 pounds ripe tomatoes

1 large shallot

1 clove garlic

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tbsp kosher salt or to taste

3 tbsp olive oil

Method

You need 1 large bowl…. & a blender or food processor

1. Cut 2 inches of the cucumber off to use as garnish…. cut it into 1/4 inch pieces & set aside
2. Chop the rest of the cucumber into pieces & put into the large bowl
3. Cut off a piece of the red pepper, about a 1/4 of it, chop it into pieces for the garnish & set aside  *** I did not serve the soup the same day so just put the cucumber & red pepper in a bowl covered & kept in the fridge until I was ready to use it
4. Cut the remaining red pepper into pieces & put into the large bowl with the cucumber
5. Cut the tomatoes into quarters & put this into the bowl with the cucumber & red pepper
6. Peel & finely chop the shallot & add to the bowl..
7. Chop the clove of garlic, add to the bowl
8. Add the red wine vinegar & kosher salt to the bowl
9. Toss everything in the bowl together & set it aside to sit for about 30 minutes
10. After the 30 minutes, Put all of the ingredients from the bowl including the juices at the bottom of the bowl into a blender
11. Add the olive oil
12. Blend
13. NOTE: All of the tomatoes etc would not fit in my blender…so I did about 2/3 of it & blended it quite smooth, removed it to a large bowl…then I blended the remainder of the ingredients that were in bowl & all fo the juices…& I blended it a bit more coarsely… Added the second batch to the first & mixed it together.
14. Put it into the refrigerator for at least 1 hour to chill. I made mine the day before…
15. Garnish with the chopped cucumber & red pepper….serve with some great bread…

Enjoy!