My Gazpacho Garden

Without any real planning or conscious effort, we somehow achieved the essentials for gazpacho -- tomatoes, cucumbers, and red and yellow peppers -- in our summer garden. A Spanish soup, served well-chilled, gazpacho has to be the perfect accompaniment to the sun-baked summer days found in Granada or Seville. Given how heated things had been here of late, with fires devastating the nearby Angeles National Forest and flames close enough to see from our front windows, cold soup seemed like the solution. Raw nourishment served up in a bowl. With this thought in mind, I consulted my Williams-Sonoma Soup Cookbook and set about procuring the one or two ingredients not already in the pantry or growing just outside the kitchen door.

A few days later, when the temps reached over 100 degrees and turning on the burners seemed like a foolhardy brush with heat prostration, I turned to my gazpacho recipe instead. Whatever climate you find yourself in, I provide this recipe below, in the spirit of passing on a good thing. One caveat, however: While I'm a big fan of this soup, the males in my house are, inexplicably, not as enamoured with it. They eat it, but they don't love it. On the flip side, I've served this soup at baby showers and other events where the guests have all been women, and not a drop goes uneaten. Could this be a gender thing? Perhaps a cold vegetarian soup lacks sufficient heartiness to appeal to more manly appetites, aligning it more closely with cold salmon, cucumber sandwiches, salad nicoise, and other so-called ladies' lunch fare. No matter, whatever my guys pass up, means more for me, which translates to cold comfort-- in a good way.

Gazpacho
This soup relies on a food processor, or a good blender, at the very least.

1.5 cups of bread crumbs
1/3 to 1/2 cup of olive oil
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 small red onion, chopped
4 cups of fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 cups water, chilled
2 cups tomato juice, chilled
3 to 6 tbsps of red wine vinegar, depending on your taste. (Spanish vinegar is best here).
salt and pepper
Extra cucumber, onion and bell pepper for garnish

Put the bread crumbs and 1/3 cup of olive oil in the food processor. Pulse until a thick paste is formed. (If too dry, add more oil.) Reserving some of the diced cucumber, onion, and bell pepper for garnish, put the three vegetables into the food processor and combine with bread crumb mixture. Once pureed, add the tomatoes and pulse some more. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl, cover and refrigerate until well-chilled. Before serving, with a whisk, combine the pureed mixture with the cold water and tomato juice. Gently stir in salt and pepper and the vinegar. (Note: add vinegar incrementally, tasting as you go, until you arrive at a sourness level that works for you.) Serve with extra diced cucumber, onion, bell pepper, croutons, or diced hard-boiled egg.