"I must take issue with your gazpacho: the ingredients well and good BUT the essential ingredient in gazpacho, hence the name, is BREAD. As with....(a senior moment) that paste made of anchovies, olives, garlic and capers: the essential is the last named hence the name which for the moment escapes me."
The gazpacho to which I am used (...) does not have bread in it. But some research told me that yes, leftover bits of bread are important. So I moistened some leftover bits of bread with olive oil and in they went.
1 clove garlic1 giant heirloom tomato, peeled (dip in boiling water for a minute having made an x-shaped incision in the skin at the top, then peel easily)
1 Kirby cucumber, or...a short, fat cucumber, peeled
1/3 of an onion (I like onion)
Some bits of olive oil-soaked white bread
Parsley
Salt, pepper, a dash of good vinegar ( I used sherry), some sugar
Whizz. Eat. Good.
Just had a cupful with my gin and tonic post Interesting Day Involving Very Big Trees and a Not-Big Enough Truck. Gazpacho is, how shall I put it? Healthy. It's good for you, and a tonic. A very good pick me up.
It's different every time I make it. This is what I had, so this is how I made it. Red peppers help. The vinegar and garlic are, to me, essential.
Excuse me while I put some organic baby back ribs under the broiler. I'm basting them with gazpacho perked up with soy sauce, chile and the obligatory ketchup NOT sweetened with corn. syrup.
I finish with the tail-end of the admonishing (and welcome) email:
"We have two varieties of peach here that I have not encountered anywhere else: a small pale greenery-yellery one, the size of an apricot, that tastes like cyanide (delicious!) and a flat one called inexplicably in Turkish "Tomato peaches". They are so flat you can stack them one on top of the other and they taste like those white peaches one used to get that the skin slipped off whole and the juice ran down your neck and stained your shirt.
Ah! tapenade!"
What about butter? Surely it needs butter too.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I splash a bit of nuoc mam in the gaz. and perhaps some lemongrass .. this is kicking it up sea style, I know. And hence, perhaps not welcome ... but os so tasty.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm. G&Ts.
I love those who get the value of a good drink.
A toi, 66.
PRS.
ps: Man who squeezes fish:Butter! Have you squeezed one too many a fish? Or perhaps you need to squeeze a few more ....
um, spelling errors aside, I stand by fish sauce! and lemongrass! in gazpacho!
ReplyDeleteprs
PRS: I'd rather squeeze a fish, as you call it, than be lead by a dog on a leash to pick up its... trash.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, I could use a few more hugs from groupers before we've killed them all.
Vincent (!): Yeah, um...butter.
ReplyDeletePRS - yes, I could see doing that. I love fish sauce.
The father of the man who squeezes fish (who is my husband, the man, not the fish!)also loved fish sauce, but sadly, we never met.
Centvingt: PRS has a cat. And you my husband, have a cat too. Who likes catching interesting creatures.
66 and Man who squeezes fish: not sure when you got hitched but congratulations!
ReplyDeleteit's nice to know that banter can be legal!
mazel tov!
prs
I made some gazpacho this summer too, partly inspired by your early summer post on it. I didn't know about the bread part so never added it. I love basil and added far too much of it, so my gazpachos had a greenish tinge....but were delicious nonetheless..
ReplyDelete