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Gazpacho Summer Soup

Update, August 2020: As much as I love this soup, I tend to make it just once a summer. The recipe is both long and large. I’ve been halving it in recent years so why not just give the smaller amounts? Less thinking that way. The original post follows.

Gazpacho for Four, Easier than Before

  • 2-3 small to medium cucumbers, about 1/2 pound, peeled
  • About 1 pound tomatoes, cored
  • 1 bell pepper, cored and seeded, any color
  • 1 medium onion, peeled, yellow, red or white
  • 1/4 cup black, green and/or Greek olives, (about 12), pitted and sliced or chopped
  • 1-2 cloves garlic, peeled and rough-cut
  • 1/2 teaspoon cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt, to start
  • 1/8 teaspoon, scant, cayenne pepper flakes or chipotle powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 Tablespoons Balsamic or red wine vinegar
  • 1 Tablespoons lime or lemon juice
  • 3 cups water, divided use
  1. Make garnish: Dice a heaping half cup each: Seeded cucumber, seeded tomato, bell pepper and onion, and place these in a small bowl. Add the olives to the small bowl.
  2. Place the seeds and any liquid from the diced cucumber and tomato in a large mixing bowl.
  3. Cut into chunks the remaining cucumber, tomato, pepper and onion. Place these in that large mixing bowl. Add garlic, spices, salt, oil, vinegar and lime or lemon juice, and also add 2 cups water to the large bowl.
  4. Puree the items in the large bowl with a stick (immersion) blender.
  5. Stir in the small bowl of diced vegetables. Add up to 1 cup more water to desired consistency (it’s better soupy than stewy). Taste and add more salt, spice or lime juice as needed. Cover and refrigerate until cool.

Makes 4-6 servings. Soup is better cold than room temperature. Refrigerate leftovers promptly, as it goes funky within days.

Notes

  • Instead of pureeing with a stick blender, puree in a jug blender or food processor.
  • I prefer to grind whole cumin and peppercorns in a mill with salt and red pepper.
  • For a vegan whole meal soup, add a 15-ounce can of cannellini (soft white) beans, rinsed and drained first, at Step 4 and puree with the rest (an exception to my use-the-bean-juice rule). Also the olive oil can be left out to cut the added fat to zero.
  • Taste each cucumber before dropping it in. Don’t use if bitter, grab another cuke.

Earlier Recipe, with Origin Story

Every summer growing up in Fort Smith, Mom would make Summer Soup a few times. The recipe was from her best friend Isabel, and when we ate at her house, she’d also have Summer Soup. (Isabel also served her own dill pickles, the world’s best.) Her soup recipe, at bottom, will take you back to the kitchens of the 1950s and ’60s. It was healthy and tasty, but for nearly three decades I’ve been preparing gazpacho, inspired by folks like Jacques Pepin and Caprial Pence.

Until this summer, my adaptations stayed close to Is’s. But this tangential remark about an entirely different soup rang out. The New York Times’ Mark Bittman uses water instead of stock occasionally for a fresher taste. Hmm. The base of seemingly every gazpacho recipe is supermarket tomato juice, sometimes V8. If the point of summer soup is to feature garden-fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers, why cloud it?

A 46-ounce can or jar of low-salt tomato or V8 juice can replace the water here, and it will intensify the flavor. But if there is nothing like home-grown tomatoes, try this way so you can really taste them. Then it’s more Summer Soup than Gazpacho.

Gee, whiz? I avoid pureed soups at restaurants; I want to see what I’m eating. But it’s needed here. Reserve some of the veggies, blend the rest and return the chopped to the bowl so diners can appreciate what they’re eating.

Bitter cukes? One day too long in the fridge, and cucumbers get nasty. Sometimes they just come that way from the store or farmer’s market. Don’t ruin your soup, taste each cuke as you start to cut it and toss it in the compost if it doesn’t pass muster. Seeding sometimes can rescue an in-between cuke. If running back to the market for better cukes is impractical, add replace ’em with another tomato or two.

Make the soup at least four hours ahead. Cover and refrigerate to marry flavors. Serving either at room temperature or icy is great.

The soup will start to turn after four or five days, so eat up! [August 2016 update: Another way to ensure the soup won’t spoil is to halve the ingredients.]

[To make a whole-meal vegan soup, add 2 cups of garbanzo or cannellini (white kidney) beans (a 15-ounce can) including liquid with the diced veggies at the end. Optionally add the beans then puree at Step 5. Less salt may be needed. Another option is rinse and drain the beans before adding.]

Gazpacho Summer Soup

  • 1 pound cucumbers (3-4 small-medium), peeled
  • 2 pounds tomatoes, cored
  • 2 bell peppers, cored and seeded, red or green
  • 1 large onion, peeled
  • 1/4 cup black, green or cured olives, (about 12), pitted and chopped, optional
  • 2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and rough-cut
  • 1 teaspoon sweet (regular, not smoked) paprika
  • 1/4 teaspoon, scant, cayenne pepper flakes
  • 1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seed
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
  • 2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 Tablespoons Balsamic vinegar or 1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • 2 Tablespoons lemon or lime juice
  • Up to 6 cups water
  1. Make garnish first: Peel and seed (scoop with a spoon) 1 cucumber, reserve seeds, and dice the meat. Cut the prettiest tomato in half and squeeze out the pulp and seeds, reserving those, and dice the meat. Dice the best pepper. Dice half the onion. Put a heaping half cup of each of these into a small bowl, add the optional olives, and set aside.
  2. Put the remaining dice (and cucumber and tomato pulp) into a 3- or 4-quart, wide-mouth refrigerator jar or tub (a large, steep-sided mixing bowl will work, too).
  3. Rough-chop remaining pepper, cucumber, onion, tomato into 2-inch chunks and add to the big container, along with the garlic, oil, vinegar and lemon juice.
  4. Grind spices, salt and pepper together in a coffee grinder, and add the mix to the container.
  5. Add about half of the water to the container — and optional beans with or without their juice) and puree with a stick (immersion) blender. Or whiz in batches with a jar blender or food processor.
  6. Stir in to the soup the reserved diced vegetables and enough of the remaining water for your preference of consistency (though it’s better soupy than stewy.) Cover and refrigerate. Before serving, taste and perhaps add a squirt more lemon juice or a quarter-teaspoon of salt and/or ground black pepper.

Makes at least eight servings.

Postscript

Here is the recipe from which the above evolved: Isabel Marks’ Summer Soup:

1 Tablespoon distilled vinegar; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 Tablespoons olive oil; 2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce; 6 drops Tabasco sauce; 1 large can tomato juice; 1 small jar pimento, undrained; 1 small can mushroom pieces and stems, drained; 1 large onion, peeled and chopped; 1 large cucumber, chopped; 4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped. Combine all ingredients and chill a day before serving. May need more salt. Makes 2 1/2 – 3 quarts. (The original called for a tablespoon of salt — maybe canned tomato juice was less salty back then.)

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