It’s way too hot to cook, so this crazy heatwave calls for a quick and easy healthy Spanish summer soup: Gazpacho! Why is this chilled soup the ideal summer recipe? It takes less than 10 minutes to make, is super fresh and has a cool name.
Ingredients*
- 2 cucumbers, halved and seeded
- 1 red pepper
- 5 ripe tomatoes
- 1/2 red onion
- 1 clove garlic, finely minced
- 2 cups tomato juice (or tomato puré + water)
- 1/4 cup white wine vinegar (or red wine vinegar)
- 1/8 cup good olive oil
- Salt n Peppa to taste
- Sliced avocado (optional)
- 1 jalapeño, spicy pepper or pepper flakes or tabasco (optional for an extra kick)
- 1 squirt Worcestershire sauce (salsa inglesa) (also optional)
Directions
Chop all of the vegetables and keep separate. If you have a food processor, throw each vegetable inside (separetly) to make each vegetable finely chopped. Don’t over process, because mushy vegetables just ain’t hot. If you like it chunky, just pulse down a few times. For those who don’t have a processor, just chop the veggies how you like it, but make sure it’s somewhat uninformed — chunks that are too big just aren’t pleasant to eat.
After each vegetable is processed, mix together in a large bowl and add the tomato juice, vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic (make sure garlic is very finely minced). Mix very well and let that shit chillllll. The longer the soup chills out, the richer the flavors will be.
Garnish with some sliced avocado and chopped cucumber, so it looks somewhat fancy.
*It’s super important to use high quality ingredients aka vegetables that taste bright and fresh on their own. If your nasty ass supermercado chino-tasting tomato is gross, the flavors will be even worse in soup form.
marian says
genia total!muuy buena opcion el Gazpacho,pero lo conozco con pan licuado en la misma sopa y queda mas espeso y clarito. (jamie oliver tiene una receta muy buena en su pagina).
Miles says
Simple, if you go to a Chino or any other form of supermarket then you are lacking a loving Boliviano in your life!!! They are the kings of verdularia. Time spent making friends with a good one is repaid ten times over. I don’t get upset when they think of me as a gringo, despite the yanqui overtones…the only ones guys round here that get it right are the Uruguayan gipsies who live in a big shed round the corner and shout out to me “Ay, sujeto de la reina”. Now these guys often have a lechon hanging from the lampost outside their shed and cook on the pavement. So as a good Brit I doff my cap and hope they invite me to feast.
And in response to t.mitchell, I actually prefer veg that is transported in an unsophisticated manner. It’s either fresh or dying. Pretty easy to tell the difference. It certainly isn’t bred for a ripe colour, picked early, transported in a chemical environment, artificially ripened, and generally tasteless at the end of the process. Call me old fashioned.
forkyou says
How politically correct of you – shall I rephrase to call it a vegetable that has an outer layer of synthetic cleaning product taste, with an odor and flavor reminiscent of how many small neighborhood Taiwanese or Chinese-owned mini markets smell?
Even the owners of my local ‘supermercado chino’ refers to them as ‘chinos.’ But you are right, there are plenty of local tendencies that verge on racist here in Argentina (and by verge, I mean are discriminatory), but I don’t think calling these types of supermarkets ‘chinos’ is one of them.
t.mitchell says
While I love what you do, enjoy Gaz on hot days, and agree with you most of the time – “chino-tasting” was lame choice of words. Chinese people don’t produce this stuff – ARGIE farms do. Chinese drivers don’t load the stuff up in unheated trucks for delivery to corner markets – other south americans do.
I know it means supermarket here, I know the AR love calling Chinese people chino to their face but come on. Just because they litter everywhere and let their pets dump everywhere should we all do too?
Paul Cockson says
It’s not a lame choice of words if the actual name of the type of store is chino. Yes the average Argentine is a little bit too racist and they do lack manners in most situations where race is involved, but calling these supermarkets chinos is just the way the format of this type of store evolved.
Over 15 years ago there were no chinos, most barrio supermarkets were Coto’s or other small chains, and they were bigger in size than current day chinos, if you didn’t have time to go to the Coto, you’d go to the Almacen round the corner, which is a tiny grocery store. With time Coto’s chain shrank to today’s numbers and somehow chinos appeared everywhere, being smaller than Cotos, bigger than despensas, having both Cotos and despensas’ advantages (Despensas’ fast service and Cotos’ product variety, for example) the new grocery store format emerged and since all of them were Chinese owned and had no real chain name, they were unofficially named ‘chinos’.
Would you go to New York and call people racist when they say they bought something from a ‘bodega’?
Gilgalad says
Lovely.