How to Make Spanish Gazpacho

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Hi, I'm Tanya Steel, Editor-in-Chief of epicurius.com,

and you're watching Around the World in 80 Dishes.

Today we're headed to Spain, and we're gonna make gazpacho.

And I'm here with my friend, Eve Felder,

from the CIA.

Chef, gazpacho is to me the essence of summer.

It's such a simple, fresh, beautiful dish.

And it is, it's all about simple ingredients,

the best tomatoes, the best cucumbers,

the best peppers.

It screams Spanish, it screams summer.

It does, and I guess, tomatoes are very much

a part of Spanish cuisine, is that correct?

Well, interesting enough, not always.

Of course they're indigenous to the New World,

so not until Spain had come to the New World.

But Spanish always made something gazpacho-like,

and it was basically made with almonds, garlic, and water.

Oh, interesting.

That's what it originally was, and sometimes bread.

It's interesting, on Epicurious, gazpacho is so popular.

I was noticing that one of the recipes

alone has 140 reviews, just on that one recipe.

It's called Mom's Gazpacho, and I think that one

of the appealing things about it is, it's so summery,

it's so simple, and also it's really, really

healthy for you.

I mean, people go on gazpacho diets.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's so simple to make.

Yeah, all right, well--

Shall we do it?

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay, so this is a great blender.

We're gonna go ahead and add--

Do you wanna add the tomatoes?

Yes.

[Eve] So we'll do the tomatoes first.

[Tanya] Now, these are just beefsteak tomatoes, or...

Yes, they are wonderful, wonderful tomatoes

that are grown right here locally, and they're

just outstanding.

And they're peeled?

They're peeled and they are not seeded.

[Tanya] Oh, okay.

[Eve] They're peeled and just finely chopped.

[Tanya] I see.

And so then cucumbers, which are also peeled.

(spoon clanking)

And then peppers that are not peeled.

[Tanya] Okay, the red peppers are not peeled, okay.

And then we're gonna go ahead and add

just a bit of this onion.

Onion is one of those funny, funny items

that it can be too strong or not strong enough,

but in most cases, it can get too strong.

So it's something that I like to slowly add and taste

and see if we need anything else.

Let's go ahead and add a little bit of tomato paste too.

And then last, but not least, the garlic.

All right.

[Tanya] It's kinda like a raw sofrito.

Exactly. In a way.

Exactly.

So we have all the ingredients, what we're gonna do

is put on the blender, and you can do this in the

food processor or you could also do it in a food mill

where you just pass it through.

We're gonna turn it on and slowly bring it up.

(blender grinding)

It's all getting nicely chopped, going down.

(blender grinding)

I'm gonna turn it off and just push it down a little bit

so it doesn't get too foamy.

Sometimes it can just get too aerated.

But push it down. (spoon clanking)

And we're gonna blend it just until

it has a tiny bit of texture.

It's a puree with a little bit of texture.

(blender grinding)

Let's stop it and taste it, and see if it has

the texture we want it to have.

I was telling my kids the other day

that cooking is all about tasting along the way.

That's the only way you can really figure out

what the story is.

Mmm, mmm.

It's good, isn't it?

It's really good isn't it?

Yummy.

So let's-- Do you see the onion?

Yes.

Yeah, I don't think we'd wanna add anymore.

No, it's mild and it's there, but if you added more

I think it would be too much.

It would, I think so.

Back to tasting, I really think that's the key

is that you can follow a recipe,

and a recipe's certainly for inspiration.

But the thing that really informs you is just to taste it.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, so let's just get a little bit--

It has nice texture, but let's just do it a tiny bit more.

(blender grinding)

Okay, so we added a little bit of parsley,

we're gonna add a bit more.

The texture's where we want it to be.

Let's go ahead.

Do you wanna add the olive oil?

Yes.

This is great Spanish olive oil.

So let's do about--

[Tanya] And this is just to add

a little bit of velvetiness to it?

Velvet-- Yes, round it out.

Just a tiny bit of fat.

Add just a bit more.

And then about a spoonful of sherry vinegar.

To me, sherry vinegar and tomatoes

is the perfect combination.

It's sweet, it's rich.

It's not stark, and it's just perfect.

Let's add some salt in there too.

Okay, and you could use red wine vinegar as well?

You could, absolutely.

The sweetness in the sherry vinegar--

Let's add some pepper too.

The sweetness in the sherry vinegar

really is a compliment to the acid in the tomatoes.

So let's go ahead and turn this on.

(blender grinding)

We added parsley, you could add basil or chives.

Or thyme.

Thyme.

I see.

Yeah, I like parsley and basil.

So now what we're gonna do is take this,

and we're gonna pour it into a bowl, okay?

Okay, I have here.

Perfect.

And we're gonna...

See that texture?

Isn't that nice?

We're gonna add some fresh tomato juice.

This is to adjust the texture.

Also, if you notice, it makes it a tad bit red.

When you aerate, when you blend the ingredients,

it puts air into it, so it makes the tomatoes

a bit pink.

All right, here we go.

Now, if, if it were too thin and your tomatoes

were too watery, you could add bread crumbs.

Traditionally, bread crumbs were put into

the almond gazpacho, garlic gazpacho,

so you could put bread crumbs.

They would absorb the extra water,

but in our case, it's really nice and thick and beautiful.

So we're not gonna add bread crumbs.

[Tanya] Okay.

So let's go ahead, we have our beautiful

little Spanish bowl and our ladle,

if you could hand that to me, Tanya.

[Tanya] And ordinarily you would chill this

in the refrigerator for 30 minutes?

You know what, you can chill it from 30 minutes

to three hours.

Oh, okay.

How's that?

That's beautiful.

I'm gonna go ahead and garnish it, just cucumbers.

[Eve] I'll just put this back here.

(bowl clanging)

Pretty.

Some Spanish onion.

A little bit of chunks of tomato.

I'm gonna put the red-- We've got new croutons.

Yeah, these look so good.

Did you make these?

Yes, made a little bit of garlic oil, olive oil

with a clove of garlic.

Didn't get the olive oil too hot, turned off--

Basically an infused oil.

The garlic, turned it off once it was heated up

and then removed the garlic once it had

flavored the oil and then added the little tiny

cuts of white bread.

Oh, I see.

I could have a bowl of this right here. (laughing)

I don't really need anything else.

So, there you go.

All right, this is so beautiful.

I have to have it with all the garnishes.

Mmm.

Mmm, isn't that good?

Now if you wanted to, just for fun,

you could just do a little sprinkling of that.

And just for fun you could serve this with a sherry.

Eww!

Wouldn't that be nice to have a glass of sherry?

That would be good.

That's a great idea.

We're talkin' a lot of fun.

Mmm.

Isn't that good?

That's so good.

That Spanish olive oil is so good.

Chef, thank you so much for showing me

how to make gazpacho, it's so good and so healthy.

It is, my pleasure.

Perfect summertime...

Summertime soup.

Mm-Hmm.

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