So this year I planted only heirloom tomatoes in the garden, not really thinking about the fact that they fruit really late in the growing season. Therefore I went through the majority of the summer with amazing and abundantly beautiful tomato bushes filled with massive green tomatoes which clearly were not going to be ready to eat until summer was over. Not only was I going to have to wait I would also have about 40 pounds of tomatoes come ripe all at the same time.
Last year I ate the most wonderful tomatoes that we got from Diablo Market in LaFayette in the East Bay. They had incredible, deep, intense tomato flavor. They were sweet! There was a sign that said they'd been "dry farmed" so I googled it. As usual I chose to do the things that were the most easily doable. In October i planted a crop of hairy vetch in the bed that the tomatoes go into every summer. In January I got out my Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter seeds I saved from last year and put them in little dirt filled containers - about 70 of them - to survive the winter outdoors. In Los Angeles it's not that hard to do, and I ended up with 70 little plants. Since I only have room to plant about 8 plants I give lots of them away.
End of March or beginning of April I cut back the hairy vetch so that it becomes mulch, and then I plant about 5 plants 3' apart. This year a I also threw some vetch seeds into the bed just because it's pretty and I thought it might keep the tomatoes company. I watered about once a week at the root for an hour. Lo and behold the bushes were abundantly full and lots and lots of tomatoes appeared. Eventually I stopped watering thinking that I could force the ripening of the fruit, but it just stayed green and got bigger.
Apparently I had over looked the fact that both of these varieties take a little longer to ripen. So I had about 60 pounds of giant tomatoes ripen simultaneously over the last two weeks of August. They're really sweet and the tomato taste is intense.
I made a lot of tomato and burrata salads. I made a lot of sandwiches that were elevated to levels of deliciousness not previously experienced with a pedestrian store bought tomato. I considered sauce, but having never made it with fresh tomatoes I was wary of making a mess with all that juicy fruit.
So it struck me that gazpacho would be a very good way to go since it uses real tomatoes and requires deep flavors to be really good. Several things stood in my way 1) I don't know how to make it and 2) I don't typically like gazpacho because I think soup should be served hot and 3) I have no idea how to make it.
But I also had 6 pounds of gorgeous heirloom tomatoes going the wrong direction in my refrigerator so after looking at several recipes and realizing that this is a Spanish soup made with wet bread when it's done in the classical way (I'm sorry but blech), I decided to free style.
Because of that there will be no pictures of my journey to this bowl of gazpacho. My tiny kitchen looked like it had been the scene of slaughter. I started chopping the tomatoes into a large mixing bowl so that I keep the juices and the seeds. Because they were so ripe I ended up mushing them up with my hands. Because I did that pulp and juice were everywhere. Oh well - it was fun!
Next I peeled and chopped an English Cucumber into 1/4" cubes, threw the chunks in a bowl and salted them to sweat them while I diced and chopped a red onion, a red bell pepper and yellow bell pepper. I threw the cucumber, a bit of onions and peppers into a food processor and just let it rip. I tasted the mush occassionally in order to add more onion and add salt. After it was smooth I put it in another big bowl to rest and enjoy the salt.
Now the tomatoes took a spin in the food processor which took them from gloppy to glossy with a little froth. I salted them at this time too because tomatoes love salt, but I wanted to be careful not to kill the intense tomato flavor I had elicited in this fruit through my almost non-watering (or lazy gardening, call it what you will).
So now I have a big bowl of pureed vegetables and another big bowl of tomato puree (which had both been poured from yet other bowls and now basically every available counter space is covered with stuff) and I get out the blender. I'm thinking that only the high "liquefy" setting is going to get me where I want to go as far as texture.
You see part of the reason I have never liked gazpacho is the texture. Too often I have been served a bowl of what basically looks and feels in my mouth like pureed vegetables with a separation of pulp and fluid occurring in the bowl that makes it abundantly clear that I am, in fact eating pureed vegetableswith chunks in it. Not soup.
Most of the time I prefer my soup hot and smooth, preferably made with vegetables sauteed in butter and and finished with a dollop of cream. But these particular tomatoes are so freaking tasty, so alive (I'm gushing I know, but they are really that good) I couldn't imagine subverting them to the heaviness of cream.
So I decided I would use the blender to marry the veggies to the tomatoes with some red wine vinegar, some balsamic vinegar and some lemon juice. I had a lot of tomato puree and a lot of veggie puree so I did it in batches of 4 ladles of tomato and 2 ladles of veggies, then I added 1 Tbls of Red Wine Vinegar and 1 capful of 16 year old balsamic, some Aleppo Chili flakes because I wanted some heat but didn't want to get dressed and go to the market for Tabasco, and a bit of salt and pepper to taste. I got the blender going and as I took the speed higher and higher toward liquefy, I drizzled about 2 TBLS of this awesome Olive Oil my friend Johnny brings me from the Fairway Market on the east coast.
I watched the soup emulsify to a creamy texture and gave it a taste - yum! It tasted bright and creamy and light in the mouth. It's delicious tomato-eyness but there's also a hint of the peppers and the cucumber and under that the onion. I don't taste the chili flakes, but that might be a good thing. Maybe they're one of those flavors that show up the next day? The next batch, because I definitely have to do this in batches there is so much of it, I do exactly the same way, but I add 1/4 cilantro leaves, just to see what that will do.
The stuff in the blender becomes a kind of alarming color, but the flavor deepens even more. I can't taste cilantro specifically but it is for sure making an appearance. I spend about half an hour tasting the first batch and then the second batch and then decide to pour them together into another big bowl. Blended they create baby bear's bowl - the one that's perfect that you just want to eat all up.
I finish the last bit of blending and get exactly the flavor that I'm aiming for and that gets added to the big bowl. I now have about a gallon of gazpacho. Really really good gazpacho. Garnishing with chopped bell peppers and avocado make it even more fun to eat.
I also have bowls on every surface, a food processor and blender that need to be cleaned and I have to wipe off the walls and the floors, but I would totally do this again. I just need a bigger kitchen and a super size Vita-mix blender.
