Gazpacho

Chef Margot shares with us her basic red gazpacho, perfect for these hot summer days.

10 of the reddest, most tomato-ey-smelling tomatoes you can find at your local farmers’ market, if you aren’t lucky enough to have grown your own!
1 loaf of stale bread, preferably sourdough, roughly chopped and soaked in a bowl of cool water until soft
1 cup olive oil
1 cup peeled, fresh garlic, chopped roughly
½ cup sherry vinegar
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 Tbsp. lemon zest
1 medium white onion, peeled, divided – half roughly chopped and half diced small
2# cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced small
2# green bell peppers, seeded and diced small
1-3 cups good-quality tomato juice
Dash of Worcestershire sauce (optional – not vegan)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Hot sauce to taste

If you don’t have a food mill (it looks like a flat-bottomed colander with a handle coming out of the center), don’t fret, but try to get one at some point. It really is indispensable for making your own tomato sauce and soup, ice creams, sorbets and jams. It’s the easiest tool for seeding and peeling all those tomatoes – you just chop ‘em up roughly, toss them in the basket, and turn the handle. What comes out is pure tomato (or strawberry, or mango, or…) with no fibers, peels or seeds.

Put all the tomatoes through the food mill into a large glass or stainless steel container. If you like, you can boil the pulp leftover and re-strain for a light tomato stock or juice. Discard the solids.

Squeeze the water out of the bread, tear into chunks and puree in a food processor or blender in batches with the garlic, the roughly chopped onion, lemon juice, olive oil, sherry vinegar, lemon juice and zest. Mix this paste well into the fresh tomato puree. Add the Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper and ho sauce to taste, and adjust the thickness with the extra tomato juice or your fresh tomato stock. Stir in the diced vegetables and cover. Refrigerate until well-chilled (3-5 hours) or overnight (best).

Taste before serving, as cold dulls flavor a bit. Serve in ice-cold bowls or wide-mouthed glasses, with fresh toasted croutons on the side and a drizzle of good olive oil on top.

Gazpacho is amazingly versatile! I also love gold gazpacho with yellow or gold tomatoes, yellow peppers and orange zest; green gazpacho with green tomatoes, tomatillos, scallion and zucchini; and white gazpacho with tons of garlic, pureed cooked egg and almonds, cucumber and olive oil. Any of these variations can be made using the basic weights/volumes given for the red version.

Also, since it keeps for about a week (and that’s usually how long it’s too hot to cook!) I make a lot. You can halve the recipe, but you can also share it with friends, dunk grilled cheese sandwiches in it, toss it with cold pasta and even make Bloody Marys with it.

For an interesting presentation, you can freeze the pure liquid soup (without the vegetable chunks) in a shallow pan. When you are ready to serve your gazpacho, take a wide soup spoon and scrape some gazpacho granita up to top your soup with. A little extra visual and textural punch, and it helps keep it cold at the table!