Gazpacho

[yvonne]

Anyone have a good gazpacho receipe they's like to pass along?

[mish]

Welcome to DC.

This is not your traditional dish, but has a different twist:

Gazpacho Granita

http://www.oprah.com/foodhome/food/r...gazpacho.jhtml

[marmalady]

Here's a tried and true I've used for years:

GAZPACHO

serves 8

4 cups peeled seeded tomatoes
1 cucumber, seeded, diced
4T green pepper, diced
1 med. red onion, diced
4T olive oil
2T red wine vinegar
1 cup V-8 juice
1T worchestershire
Salt/pepper
Tabasco to taste

Pulse tomatoes and half of cucumber, onion and green pepper in food processor with on/off motion til just little bits remain. Add rest of vegetables, and rest of ingredients and mix well. Chill well before serving.

Feel free to add more or less veg or spice, depending on your own taste.

[crusty61]

hello all, i was watching a t.v show today and a sicilian lady made gaspach and i was surprised at how little tomatoes was in it, salt,oil, garlic, stale bread, cucumber, capsicum(pepper), vinegar, herbs,and 2 tomatoes, which was a very small % but being nosey, i tried and it was beaut, the bread made it a very filling and smooth soup. cheers crusty 61

[jkath]

Try these, too, yvonne:

http://www.discusscooking.com/forums...earchid=265421

[Banana Brain]

I made a fire-raosted gazpacho recipe from Racheal Ray's magazine not that long ago, but I'm not going to pass it on because it wasn't that good. Or maybe I'm just not a gazpacho person. I think it maybe would have been good if the rcipe didn't call for hot chipotle peppers in a dobe sauce (they just brought an overwelming nasty flavor into the picture).

[Snoop Puss]

A gazpacho recipe given me by my Spanish neighbour for generous servings for two people:

Half a dozen or so really ripe fair-sized tomatoes. I don't peel them first - I strain the finished gazpacho through a colander to remove any final bits of peel at the end. Peel if you like, however, but try not to get the tomatoes too hot if you use the boiling water method as the gazpacho will take longer to chill.
Extra virgin olive oil - oil made from picual olives (from southern Spain) works better than oil made from arbequina olives (from Catalonia) as arbequina oil is a bit bitter
A four-inch length of cucumber. The cucumbers here in Spain are somewhat hard and dry in comparison with UK cucumbers and always have seeds. I'm not sure what cucumbers are like in the US. I remove the peel to preserve the red of the soup and remove the seeds. If you have a seedless cucumber, leave the very moist central section.
A clove or two of garlic depending on how much you like garlic.
One or two green peppers. Now these are the secret to Spanish gazpacho in my opinion. Here in Spain, you can get the round bell peppers and the long thin peppers that taper to one end. The flesh is thinner, pepperier and less bitter than bell peppers. Even here in Spain we call them Italian peppers. If you can get these, so much the better. If you can only get bell peppers, try a bit and use one or perhaps less if it seems a bit bitter to you.
Salt to taste
White wine or sherry vinegar - good quality

Start by chopping the tomatoes into smallish chunks. Drop half the tomatoes into a jug blender with a tablespoon of olive and whizz. If the blender gets stuck, switch off, shift the contents about and start again. When relatively well chopped, add the other tomatoes. Whizz again.
Chop the prepared cucumber into chunks and drop it plus the roughly chopped garlic into the blender and whizz.
Remove the seeds from the green peppers and chop them into smallish chunks and drop into the mixture with a teaspoon of vinegar. Whizz till smooth.
Then taste and adjust the oil (you might want to add up to a couple of tablespoons) and the vinegar and add some salt to taste.

If you don't have a jug blender, you can drop all the ingredients at once into a food processor and whizz till done or use a stick blender. If you use one of these methods, it would probably be better to peel the tomatoes and you'll definitely want to strain the gazpacho.

When you have the gazpacho made, strain through a colander or sieve (a seive will take a long time - I find a colander more than satisfactory). You might need to swirl the gazpacho about to help it filter through.

It should not be necessary to add chilled water or ice to the gazpacho if your tomatoes are juicy and ripe enough. Adding ice to chill the gazpacho is in fact frowned on by most Spaniards.

Then chill. I do this by pouring the gazpacho into an enamelled bowl that I then stand in the freezer. When I've got about 3/4 of an inch or so of slushy ice crystals formed around the base and sides of the bowl, I stir them in and that's it chilled and ready. Leaving the gazpacho to chill in the fridge will take a long time. It works, but you will lose some of the fresh flavour of the ingredients.

As for onion, I've seen recipes with onion in but have never found them to my taste. Before my neighbour showed me how she made gazpacho, I always used onion and was never satisfied with the results, regardless of how little I used: the onion became the predominant flavour in my view. According to my neighbour, gazpacho with onion begins to "fermentar" (ferment) in the soup if it is left for any length of time. And as for sugar, if the tomatoes are sweet enough, you shouldn't need any, though I've also seen recommendations for a 1/2 teaspoon or so.

Gazpacho is traditionally served with finely chopped garnishes such as green and red pepper, cucumber, onion, ham and croutons that guests add to their own bowl of gazpacho.

[Jasrdv]

Important: you should remove the seeds from the tomatos and the cucumber! these should not be in the mix, even if you strain. Also, for a nice extra taste, briefly roast the pepper if you have a gas range. Filtering the mash through a sieve, colander or tamiz is all important if you want a pleasant texture. Gazpacho is not simply a salad in a blender, it requires a bit of work to make right. It must rest in the fridge for a couple of hours. DO NOT ADD ICE!
chopped hard-boiled egg and cured ham bits also make a nice garnish.

[jennyema]

I always use bread and sherry vinegar. Sometimes I add chopped Spanish olives.