Jul 22

Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho

Every so often I look at my crowded cookbook shelves and say, “I’ve got to get rid of some of these books,” and so I sit down on my office floor and get lost. Lost in time, memories, and great recipes. Most recently, I pulled down a shelf-full of books and pulled out a goodie – Raymond Sokolov’s “Why We Eat What We Eat,” with a yellow sticky note marking the page on “Gazpacho, The Soup the Tomato Overwhelmed.” It  referenced M.F.K. Fisher’s “How to Cook a Wolf” recipe for gazpacho as being the middle ground between the authentic pre-Columbian, tomato-free Spanish gazpacho thickened with bread crumbs and the clean-out-the-fridge chunky tomato gazpacho we see more often today. I grabbed both books and dashed to the kitchen. Outside the temperature soared above 100 degrees, but inside my cool kitchen the food processor was the work-horse, pureeing tomatoes, herbs and a pepper from the garden, along with garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice. I stuck a spoon in the bowl of the processor and pulled up a taste – perfection. In spite of M.F.K. Fisher’s suggestion, I did not add water and bread crumbs. But I did follow her guidance and folded in diced cucumber at the end. And I am thinking that next time I will add chopped avocado along with cucumber and a sprinkling of fresh cilantro. Or, maybe crabmeat, and a few crunchy pan-fried croutons? What I will not change are the juicy, fat, summer heirloom tomatoes, with loads of flavor, acidity and sweetness that made my gazpacho so memorable. Yet, I have to agree with Sokolov: “There are many gazpachos, and I have never, or almost never, tasted one I didn’t like.”

 

Here is the recipe.