Keeping Cool - the soup course

No, it is not the humidity

Am I the only one who finds it odd that, when the summer heat gets to be nearly unbearable, guys all over the USA decide it's time to leave their air conditioned homes to stand over a barbecue or grill and eat hot smoke? Sure, grilled food is tasty, but backyard grilling always seemed to me an activity better suited for autumn or winter. At least here in Austin. Maybe it's just my genetic make up. I didn't get the beer or football genes, either.

As much as I generally enjoy playing with fire and flipping sauté pans, there comes a time here in Texas when no amount of air conditioning can keep up with the combination of the heat outside, the heat from the kitchen, and a hot meal. Just last night, we had pasta in a mushroom cream sauce. By the end of the meal, I was sweating. Guess it was a bad day for a dish that retains its heat. Usually on such days, to avoid torturing myself in the kitchen and my family at the table, I end up preparing a lot of salads, tartares, carpaccios, and the occasional cold soup preparations. Understand, many of these cold preparations do require a bit of cooking—vichyssoise, for example, requires quite a lot of cooking—but I prepare and serve the key components cold. These past two weekends, I experimented with gazpacho recipes and a couple of king crab preparations.

I'll talk about the crab dishes in another posting, which means this will be my first ever published recipe that is vegan-safe. (I was going to put an exclamation point at the end of that sentence, but even my hypocrisy has its bounds.)

Gazpacho

Tomatoey gazpacho is a long-standing summer favorite of mine. It always astonishes me how grinding up some tomatoes with some cucumber, peppers, garlic, and onion and mixing in a little oil and vinegar can produce such a remarkably cool and surprisingly buoyant texture. Gazpacho is an excellent adjunct to crab, shrimp, lobster, or just a little cheese (oops, so much for the vegan vote).

Purists and food historians will tell you that gazpacho has to be made with stale bread. Yes, gazpacho, which was around before the tomato and chili came to Iberia, was originally a concoction of stale bread, garlic, vinegar, and olive oil. I haven't tried it, but I have to admit: I think it sounds ghastly. Since I don't use stale bread in my recipe, some food mavens might say that mine isn't true gazpacho. I've tried it both with and without the bread, though, and I can't see that the bread adds anything to the flavor or texture of the soup.

I approached the gazpacho prep in these last few attempts with a few extra goals in mind. First, I wanted a recipe that uses a chili other than the traditional green bell pepper. Green bell pepper lends a slight pepperiness but I believe it also gives a flat bitterness to the soup. Besides, bell pepper and my wife don't get along. Second, I wanted to use roasted garlic and chilis to lend a little smokiness to the soup and to reduce the harshness of the garlic. I also tried out two varieties of sweet onion in an attempt to eliminate the lingering oniony aftertaste I have experienced in some gazpachos.

In the first gazpacho experiment, I used two pounds of tomatoes, one English cucumber, two roasted garlic cloves, a roasted poblano pepper, and one quarter of a large Walla Walla onion (about a half cup of diced onion). It was tasty, but I thought the onion overpowered the garlic. I also noticed, about an hour after the meal, that I was still tasting cucumber. I decided I could do without that cucumber aftertaste. Based on these results, I decided that my next attempt would include twice as much garlic, a quarter cup of sweet onion, and half an English cuke.

Here is the recipe I finally settled on (enough for four diners):

dramatis personae

one poblano pepper
four garlic cloves
two pounds red tomatoes, cored and seeded
one half English cucumber, peeled
one quarter cup sweet onion, diced
one cup tomato juice
one quarter cup red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
one half cup extra virgin olive oil
salt

quality of ingredients

The garlic should not be so dry that the husks have cracked. You also don't want cloves that have begun to sprout—they're bitter. If any have started to sprout, you'll see a green or yellow tail poking through the narrow end of the clove.

The tomatoes should be as red and ripe as possible. Fresh off the vine is best. Tomatoes sold as "vine-ripened" are probably the next best choice. Other tomatoes in the grocery stores are likely to have been artificially ripened by storage in ethylene gas, which makes them paler, mealier, and less flavorful. Any firm variety of tomato will do for Gazpacho, but I wouldn't recommend anything smaller than Romas, since seeding them will take a lot more time.

Some folks prefer sherry vinegar in gazpacho. I honestly can't tell the difference, and red wine vinegar is easier to find in the stores. The vinegar is only in the soup to add a little sparkle; it's not a major component. Since you're not going to taste much of it anyway, I certainly would not recommend wasting a premium sherry vinegar in something that's going to swallow up most of its character.

I usually use tomato juice from concentrate in my gazpacho. This boosts the tomato flavor and flavor just a smidgeon, but it has the negative effect of increasing the water content of the soup. Next time I do this, I think I'll try straight tomato juice concentrate instead of the reconstituted juice.

I have used Anaheim chilis and Hatch hot chilis in the past. I prefer the extra heat from the Hatch chilis, but they're not available year round. I like the smoky heat of roasted Poblanos, but their heat ranges from as mild as a bell pepper to not-quite-jalapeño strength. If you want consistency, taste the chili before you roast it.

I used a sweet red Italian onion in my second gazpacho experiment, but I still was not happy with the results. Next time, I'm going to try eliminating the onion altogether.

preparation notes

Making gazpacho is generally damned simple. You toss the ingredients into a food processor and run it till it reaches the desired consistency, chill it for a half hour, and serve it.

As I noted previously, I complicated matters by roasting two ingredients. I think the results proved positive.

You can roast the poblano under the broiler, but that heats up the kitchen and takes a bit longer. I just put it directly on the grate over my largest burner. Use a pair of forks to turn it every few seconds. Once all the skin is completely charred black, remove the chili from the burner and wrap it in a pair of wet paper towels. After about five minutes, wipe away and discard all the black skin. Don't rinse the chili. You'll wash away some of the flavor. You should be able to pluck off all the blackened skin with your fingers. If you can't, you didn't roast it long enough. Remove and discard the stem, seeds and any pulp remaining inside the chili.

The garlic is even easier to roast. Peel off the papery layers, but leave the hard husks intact. Place the cloves in a cast iron skillet or comal, dry, over a medium-high flame. Turn the cloves every three or four minutes (I use chopsticks). Every flat surface of the cloves should be black, and the cloves should be quite soft. Set the cloves aside to cool for a few minutes. Once they're cool enough to handle, peel away and discard the husks. With a paring knife, scrape away any black bits from the cloves.

Now you should be ready to process, chill, and serve your gazpacho.