I know. It’s not really even tomato season yet and I’m making gazpacho, but I just can’t help myself. The lure of the local farmers’ markets have me getting up early these past few Saturdays and so…..I had to do it. This is a perfect soup in every way. Healthy, refreshing, and undeniably beautiful to behold all you need is a sharp knife, a food processor, a big bowl and some great produce. Eat this, feel good, repeat as often as you like.
This is what you need and what I did.
This takes about 20 minutes to peel, dice, chop and mix together. Easy! Important note, however, that this soup needs to be super cold upon service so please allow several hours of chill time. This is enough for four or five people …… and if you are really lucky - leftovers! Grocery list is at the end of the post.
You are going to need a lot of room for this so get out a couple of cutting boards. Go ahead and start this shin-dig by smashing two garlic cloves out of their skins and give them a fine dice. Pop the garlic straight away into the bowl of your food processor.
Take half of a red bell pepper, half of a yellow bell pepper, clean em out and chop them evenly. I don’t particularly care for green bell pepper but if you do - go ahead and green it up. Keep the pieces nice and small and uniform if you can; this is actually sort of important. See the zucchini? Chop it up. Keep it even……..
And the onion……just use half of a medium-sized red one.
Yeah, I know this is all out-of-order but the point is….chop everything up! Right? And do your best to keep the pieces small and uniform because some of this will end up as a garnish.
As always when you are choosing a cucumber use the english variety (the one that’s long and sorta skinny and wrapped in plastic) so you don’t have to deal with the seeds. I always like to give it a peel but you don’t have to. Bonus!
I used about 5 medium-sized tomatoes for this. Yes, chop em up. Now let’s see …you’ve got two finely chopped cloves of garlic waiting in the bowl of your food processor, and you have beautifully chopped a half of a red bell pepper, half of a yellow bell pepper, half of a medium size red onion, one whole english cucumber, one whole zucchini, and 4- 5 tomatoes. Perfect.
Now buzz that garlic up in the food processor to finish what you started. Then to the garlic add….HALF of the chopped red onion, HALF of the chopped red bell pepper, HALF of the chopped yellow bell pepper, HALF of the zucchini, half of the cucumber (you’re catching on now, I can tell) and half of the tomatoes you got there.
Now give that a whirl.
Pretty! Looks like veggie confetti.
Next thing you will add is two cups of tomato juice (it is actually vegetable juice but whatever) and 1/4 cup of olive oil. Now if your food processor bowl is small (like mine) and you know that two whole cups of juice won’t fit and you’re just gonna end up with a big mess when you hit the pulse button, go ahead and add what you can. You can dump the rest in when you transfer everything to that big bowl you have on stand by.
So give this a good buzz until you have a course puree…add then add 1/8 of a cup of red wine vinegar. Buzz it up a bit more, until nicely blended.
Pour this into your big bowl. All of those chopped veggies you have left sitting over there? Add HALF of the chopped red onion, HALF of the chopped red bell pepper, HALF of the chopped yellow bell pepper, HALF of the zucchini, half of the cucumber (are you with me? does this sound familiar?) and half of the tomatoes you have left, and pop em into your pureed veggies. Add the rest of the tomato juice if you had to hold back from adding it to your food processor, and add another cup to the bowl as well for a total of three cups of juice. Give this a good hit of kosher salt. You will end up with both a smooth and chunky texture…….perfect!
The last remaining veggies will go into a bowl that you will save and use to garnish with later.
Now I like to add a little kick to my gazpacho and there are a couple of ways to do this. You could dash in a little hot sauce, or buzz a little jalapeno up into the mix and either one of those choices are fine but what I like to do is add about 1/4 cup of tomatillo salsa. Make sure you stick with a green salsa…..you don’t need any more tomatoes in this. Now give this a taste and add some salt and pepper as your taste permits. Cover this tightly and let it hang out in the fridge for at least three hours. Longer if you can wait!
Now ladle some of your gorgeous gazpacho into a bowl, and top it with a spoonful of your extra veggies, a few avocado slices and a sprinkle of cilantro. A pinch of salt at this point would not be a bad idea……..
A grilled cheese sandwich to go along is not a bad idea either!
What you will need to procure:
- 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
- 1/2 of a red onion, diced
- 1 english cucumber, diced
- 4-5 tomatoes, as pretty as you can find, diced
- 1 zucchini, diced
- 1/2 red bell pepper, diced
- 1/2 yellow bell pepper, diced
- 3 cups of V8 juice
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1/8 cup of red wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup of tomatillo salsa
- 1 avocado
- bunch of cilantro
- 1 lime
- kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste
