Give me something simple and authentic, as close to what I could find in Barcelona as possible. I don’t need a lot of bells & whistles. Bonus points for something that is easy to make and doesn’t require a lot of ingredients.
Thanks!
This is my favorite Gazpacho recipe. Enjoy
Ingredients
* 1 cup chopped red onions
* 1 cup chopped green bell pepper
* 1 cup chopped English cucumber
* 1 cup chopped, seeded and peeled tomatoes
* 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped garlic
* 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
* 1/4 cup tomato paste
* 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
* 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
* 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
* 3 Spicy V-8 juice
* Sprig of thyme
* Balsamic Glaze (see below)
Directions
- Mix all the ingredients except the balsamic glaze together in a bowl or other container, cover, and let sit in the refrigerator overnight.
- The next day, remove the thyme and blend all the ingredients in a blender until the gazpacho is smooth. You will have about 2 quarts. For a smoother texture, strain the soup to yield about 1 quart. Refrigerate the gazpacho until ready to serve.
- To complete: Ladle the cold soup into bowls and squeeze dots of balsamic glaze over the top.
- Balsamic Glaze: 2 cups balsamic vinegar Heat the vinegar in a heavy saucepan over medium heat until steam rises from the liquid. Place the saucepan on a heat diffuser and let the liquid reduce very slowly (it shouldn’t simmer) for 2 to 3 hours, until it has reduced and thickened to a syrupy glaze. There should be approximately 1 cup of glaze. Keep the glaze in a squeeze bottle at room temperature for garnishing: if the glaze is too thick, warm the bottle in hot water to loosen the glaze.
Should be 3 cups spicy V-8 juice or any kind of tomato juice you like…
Not sure how authentic it is but I like it and have gotten rave reviews from guests.
They may just be being nice though.
I hate gazpacho soup, but my husband had this at a high-end resort we went to once, and loved it so much that I found the recipe and made it for him at home. It doesn’t seem to be posted on their website anymore, but here it is.
Executive Chef Michael Hutcheon’s
World-Famous Two Bunch Gazpacho Recipe
Cucumber
One: peel & deseed, then dice.
Celery
Two stalks: dice.
Avocado
Two, medium: dice
Red Onion
One, small, finely diced
V8 Juice
1 pint
Tomato Juice
1 Pint
Lemon Juice
from 1 to 2 lemons
Tomato Ketchup
1/2 to 1 cup
Salt & Pepper to taste
Tabasco
Five dashes
If you like more spice, add finely diced jalapeño. If you like the consistency to be chunky, then dice the ingredients to preferred size, hand mix it all together and finish off with chopped cilantro or Italian flat leaf parsley. Enjoy!
Tomatoes, cherry, two fistfuls
Cucumbers, Persian (the only type I’ll eat…but if using traditional, deseed and skin), 1.5-2 –> chopped
Wee coloured capsicum (obtained at Trader Joe’s) or 1 roasted green, red, yellow or orange bell pepper. I put in two teeny weeny (like jalapeno sized) yellow and orange, and threw in two roasted reds. I recommend roasted bell peppers, I think they make the soup velvety.
1.5 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 minced clove garlic (or more…my stomach can’t handle much raw garlic) or garlic powder
1/2 small white onion
1/2 stale wheat roll or 1/2 a piece stale wheat bread –> soften with a couple of tablespoons of watert
Salt
Pepper
Toss all in a blender and blend. And then blend some more. Seriously, you can blend this enough. Blend till the soup is warm. The longer you blend, the more velvety it becomes. Quantities are adjustable, this is a duh recipe.
To serve immediately, add some ice cubes (necessary if you blend long enough) or for delayed service, put in bowls and chill in the fridge until ready for dinner.
You can strain for the peels if you like but I don’t bother.
I like to serve it with a Salad Nicoise.
The above recipes are fine, but except for the last one, they don’t contain soaked stale bread, which, from my experience, is pretty much required of Spanish gazpacho. After all, gazpacho was originally formulated as a way to use up stale bread.
The recipe here is pretty much how I make mine, although I will sometimes blend in the cucumbers with the tomatoes. Here’s another traditional recipe. If you’re looking to replicate the gazpacho you had in Barcelona, look to the above two recipes to get an idea. The recipe for Spanish gazpacho is somewhat standardized.
edit: In addition to the garnishes listed in the New York Times article, I sometimes also like to include finely cubed ham and a little bit of chopped parsley or basil (although I tend to go for parsley in this dish, for some reason.)