I've been wanting to cook new recipes for the past year and change up the rotation a bit. Gazpacho was something I made once during the pandemic but wanting to make again, and tomato season is such a narrow window of time to enjoy my favorite harvest. On a rare week of hot muggy weather in the Bay Area, I finally made the summer Spain staple. I looked at various recipes and finally settled on Jose Andres recipe and trekked to a produce store for a couple of Persian cucumbers and an Anaheim pepper. I'd already had on hand, shallots, garlic and jalapeno and Fresno peppers not to mention a bumper crop of heirloom tomatoes.
I didn't bother removing the skins off the tomatoes because I wasn't going to add bread to thicken the soup and would let the blender pulverize that tomato skin to add body, but I did remove the seeds to avoid bitterness. Per the recipe, I planned to embellish the soup with the other vegetables and aromatics, and so I removed the seeds from the cucumbers and the chiles before chopping and mincing along with the shallot.
To the blender besides the tomatoes which contained a lot of juice, I also added a teaspoon of sherry vinegar and a teaspoon of kosher salt and generous drizzles of olive oil. I pulverized until liquid.
Oh my! The soup tasted divine already. While buying the produce, I also found a sugar kiss melon and put that into the fridge to take the edge off during the swelter of summer.
Dinner or serving time! I dressed my toppings in more olive oil and sherry vinegar and sprinkles of sea salt and poured the wine.
Such a pretty soup.
Supper was divine. I shared a serving of the soup the next night with my neighbor, who also raved about this first time eating a cold summer soup.
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