Gazpacho. The perfect summer treat, cool and refreshing, and extremely healthy. Gazpacho is Spanish and Portugese in origin. It started out being a combination of stale bread, olive oil, garlic, salt, and vinegar. In areas of Spain, almonds are a common ingredient in making white gazpacho.
Over time, as all recipes should, this dish evolved. It'm not sure when or why it changed, and how it retained its name. But now, we use tomatoes as the base, along with other veggies and the ingredients listed above. This would be a great thing to serve on the 4th, given it's red hue, the chill factor, and the refreshing taste. Plus, if you wanted to (and depending on how smooth you make it), you could even carry it around in a pitcher and pour more for your guests as you make your rounds. You could do so many variations on this, and you could serve it topped, or side-by-side with, so many things. Have fun with it. Here's your basic recipe:
Gazpacho
2 - 2 1/4 lbs of plum tomatoes
1/2 green pepper
1/2 cucumer, peeled
1/8 - 1/4 onion
2 cloves garlic
1/2 c. "day old" bread
3-4 Tbsp vinegar, preferrably sherry vinegar, perhaps red wine vinegar would do, as well
salt
1 cup water
Roughly chop all veggies. Doesn't matter how good you are at this, because they'll be blended like crazy. Blend these with the cup of water.
Soak your bread in water, them squeeze it out. Blend or mix this with your garlic, oil, vinegar, and salt.
Put the 2 mixtures together and blend like crazy. Strain if you want to.
Chill for a couple hours (both you and the soup can chill next to a cocktail) and await your guests. Serve chilled. Garnish with basil leaves.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment