Gazpacho: If you can’t stand the heat, get into the kitchen

According to every single Facebook post I read last week, no matter where you live, you were hot. Welcome to summer, the season we have already had just about enough of, and it’s not even August yet.

If there is one truth about summer, it’s this: When the thermometer reaches three degrees short of Hell, your first instinct will be stove/oven avoidance. And while entering the kitchen—especially to make soup—will seem counterintuitive at this point, there’s really no better time to break out the gazpacho, your own personal culinary cooling unit.

Think of gazpacho as a salad—a salad for people who are too hot to chew. Just like most of the salads we reach for during warm spells, the ingredients in gazpacho are raw. Also, as with many salad dressings, gazpacho offers the brightness of vinegar, sharp edges smoothed by oil. It even has croutons, sort of.

Over the years, I fiddled and futzed with various gazpacho recipes. They were either too watery or too chunky or too cucumbery. None really grabbed us until a few years ago, when I discovered this one printed in the newspaper food section. It’s from a bistro in Oregon (aka the state from I which was dragged kicking and screaming as the result of a job relocation). It’s creamy and full of layered flavors, but somehow still bracing in warm weather.

The soup is concocted over a two-day period, so while it requires a bit of preplanning, you will have the bonus of a refreshing 24-hour break between phases. You’ll get plenty of time to wipe away the sweat of exertion as your gazpacho relaxes in the fridge for a day, chilling away, mingling ingredients, and developing flavor. (Avoid the temptation to open the door and climb in with it. The gazpacho doesn’t want to see you now.)

Day 1 of Project Gazpacho involves some boiling, peeling, and chopping. Sure, you can let your food processor do the hard work. Day 2 involves some light exercise with the strainer, but since gazpacho is served chilled, there’s no hurry to get it done right before dinner. You can do one or both of these steps in the cool morning hours, before you take to your chaise for the day with a glass of lemonade or start uploading photos of your car's thermometer readings to Facebook.

If you like tomato soup in the winter, you’ll probably like gazpacho in the summer. But maybe instead of the traditional grilled cheese accompaniment, you’ll serve it with some crusty bread and Spanish cheese. Honestly, though, this soup is filling enough to stand on its own, as a light summer meal.

Before you peek at the ingredients, a warning: You will no doubt shake your head and mutter “Oh, no. No way.” when you see the amount of olive oil contained herein. But stay with me. It is absolutely necessary for flavor and texture. Besides, the monounsaturated fatty acids in olive oil are heart healthy—much better for you than the animal fat in that combination pizza you were going to have delivered, just so you didn’t have to turn on the oven.

Creamy Gazpacho

Recipe from the Silver Grille, Silverton, Oregon

Serves 4 as a main; 6-8 as a starter

1 pound ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped

2 cups peeled and chopped cucumber (about one large cucumber)

1 ½ cups peeled and chopped carrots (about three large carrots)

1 ½ cups peeled and chopped fennel bulb (about two medium bulbs. Save some of the fronds for garnish if you like)

1 large red bell pepper

2 large cloves garlic

1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce (or to taste)

4 ounces of dry bread, ground into crumbs (about 2 cups crumbs)

¼ cup sherry vinegar

2 teaspoons kosher salt and ½ tsp. freshly ground black pepper (or to taste)

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

Put a large pot of water on to boil. While the water is heating, cut a small X on the bottom of each tomato. When the water is boiling, carefully add the tomatoes. Boil for about 30 seconds, or until you see the skin loosening at the X, up to one minute. Remove the tomatoes with a slotted spoon and set aside to cool.

In the meantime, chop or break the dry bread into roughly two-inch pieces. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade, grind the bread chunks into crumbs, the largest of which are about the size of a small pea.  Remove crumbs from the food processor and set aside. If you didn’t weigh out 4 ounces of bread, measure your two cups now. Freeze any additional crumbs in an airtight bag for another use.

If you don’t mind a little knife work, chop the cucumber, carrot, fennel, red bell pepper, and garlic. If you want to use the food processor to do your chopping, cut the vegetables into rough two-inch pieces and chop each separately. They can all go into the same bowl as you remove them from the processor. Once all vegetables are chopped, add them back into the food processor or blender with the Tabasco sauce and the crumbs. (I think my blender works better for this part, so that’s what I use.) Process until smooth and refrigerate overnight, or at least 8 hours.

The next day, return the vegetable puree to the food processor or blender. With the machine running, add the vinegar, salt, and pepper, then slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Taste and adjust salt and pepper if necessary, then push the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into a medium bowl or large measuring cup, pressing with the back of a wooden spoon to extract all of the liquid.

Refrigerate until ready to serve in cold bowls or cups. Garnish with some chopped fennel fronds, if you like.