Gazpacho, I owe you an apology.
Up until a few short years ago, I had dismissed you as overrated at best – and downright weird at worst. After all, people described you as being like a salad put through the blender. I don’t know about you, Gazpacho, but I where I was raised, nice people do not put salads in blenders. They put them on salad plates. Or in those little wooden bowls that came as a set with the larger bowl and the chicken-shaped wooden salad tongs.
Either you had too many different vegetables or not enough, a strange combination of fresh herbs, or an even stranger combination of dried ones. To top it all off, the act of trying to serve you as a light, fat-free starter, a silly way to “celebrate” tomatoes while keeping one’s beach body safely intact, left you tasting one-dimensional and watery. Much like a salad that’s been through the blender – and I think I have already been clear on my stance there.
Luckily, during my last trip to Madrid, I met your ancestral cousin, salmorejo. I ate it with my friend Duco at a tiny pinxos bar where I was the only non-resident in attendance, a fact made clear to me by all the commentary from the grumpy old Madrilenos sitting around me. “How’d she find us? Are there more tourists outside?” I tried my best 100-watt smile on them and promised, in Spanish, not to tell anyone about their location. They sniffed at my lousy accent but had the good manners to stop discussing me. I didn’t really care either way, as I was completely fixated on the salmorejo. It was incredible – rich, yet light and tangy, with the mouthfeel of melted butter and the acidic meatiness of a perfect tomato. It was airy like a perfect aioli, but without the lingering 3-day haunt of garlic breath. We cleaned the bowl with our crusty slices of bread and immediately I began to interrogate Duco (who is also a chef) on ways in which I could replicate this dish at home.
“You can’t,” he said definitively. “Your olive oil sucks in America.”
I reminded Duco that many things had changed in the U.S. since his stint here in the early 90s, including a marked decrease in the number of “Rachel” haircuts and access to ever-more high quality food products like excellent Spanish olive oil. He conceded, and began to relay his method of blending bread, tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil, until I blurted out, “You mean it’s like gaTHpacho?” (I had to emphasize the “TH” for “z” or I was sure he would pretend not to understand me.)
“Yes,” he said, “it’s similar, but with more olive oil…” and was about to mention something else on the subject but was distracted by a large plate of tissue-thin jamon that appeared before us. It mattered not to me. I had seen the glory that you could be, Gazpacho, and I was armed for my return to the kitchen.
Gazpacho
Makes 8 cups
The secret to this gazpacho is the olive oil – it’s about a quarter of the entire recipe! Make sure to use oil that’s tasty but not overpowering. The addition of canned whole San Marzano tomatoes helps boost the body and overall tomato-iness of the soup. We carry both quality olive oil and San Marzano tomatoes at The Chopping Block.
6 roma tomatoes, cored and halved
4 San Marzano canned tomatoes, with their juices
1 english cucumber, peeled (fine dice the unpeeled ends for a little garnish)
¼ cup parsley leaves
¼ cup basil leaves
1 shallot, chopped roughly
1 large clove garlic
2 T sherry vinegar
1 t salt
¼ t freshly ground black pepper
2 cups good-quality olive oil (What do I mean by good quality? If you don’t like it by itself on a piece of bread, you won’t like it in this gazpacho.)
Put everything except the olive oil into your blender and blend until completely smooth. (If your blender has room for 2 more cups of liquid, congratulations! You can finish the whole recipe right there. If it does not have more room, keep reading.) Pour out 1/3 of your gazpacho into a bowl large enough to hold the whole batch, then put the rest back on the blender base. Add the olive oil in a slow and steady stream, and keep the blender running for 30 seconds after you have added the last bit of oil to make sure that the oil is completely emulsified. Add the emulsified gazpacho to the batch in the bowl, stir well, and adjust seasoning as necessary with salt, pepper, and additional sherry vinegar.
You can eat this right away, or refrigerate for up to 3 days. The soup will separate in the fridge and that’s fine – just whisk to recombine before serving.