Sun presses down on this white village in southern Spain's Andalucia region. Ice clatters gently in the simple clear glass Arcoroc rimmed soup plates ubiquitous in Spanish working class homes. I am helping Dona Antonia and her daughter Tere place their flavorful red soup-salad around the table covered with one of the cloths Antonia embroidered as a young girl. It is 2:00 P.M., dinner time. The kitchen is fragrant with the deep fried breaded boquerones (large fresh white anchovies), breaded fried hake and Russian salad that wait to be served for the second course. First, however, family members will cool their bodies and stimulate their appetites with flavorful gazpacho.
Gazpacho is perfect food during intensely hot summer weather. Because it is so light and often all or partly raw, it does not weigh in the body as a winter soup, a cocido, would. There is no need to heat a stove when making gazpacho, it provides water that has been perspired away and it is rich in nutrients and fiber. Not that you have to think about that when a good, icy cold gazpacho is cooling you and feeding you with the lightness you crave in summer. It is both food and drink. During the busiest periods of the agricultural season, when workers stay in fields far from town all day, family members bring them jugs of gazpacho to enjoy before they find a tree under which to sleep the siesta. It meets all their needs for the day's labor.
Antonia's family is not involved in agriculture. Her husband works at the bank. One of her grown daughters runs a bread outlet and the tobacco stand next to it. Teresa works at a day care center. Younger family members are still in school, although not now, in August. They play freely in the streets until school starts again in October, just as I, a teacher, am free until October. Businesses all close during the early afternoon hours. Everybody goes home to dine with family--usually three or four courses--and enjoy the languid siesta. Tere has arrived early enough to help with some of the meal preparation. Similar scenes play out in houses all over town. In this heat, it is a good bet that many families are having gazpacho in one form or another.
We gather elbow to elbow around the table, recite a grace and make the sign of the cross. After gazpacho, Antonia takes the empty dishes to the kitchen and brings out the main course. No soup in Spain, no matter how hearty, constitutes a main dish at dinner. I jump up to help her, for I have been accepted as a family member. No guest in Spain is permitted to (or expects to) enter the kitchen. Between us, we return with three platters. One contains the crisp white anchovies garnished with parsley and lemon halves and another, similarly garnished, has thick steaks cut from a hake caught during the night and presented at the village market shortly after dawn. The combined fragrance of sea from the fish and land from the olive oil in which they were fried further piques appetites already opened by gazpacho tang. The third platter is heaped with vivid Russian salad, potatoes, beets, carrots and peas bound in homemade mayonnaise.
Our third and final course will be a deep bowl filled with chilled fresh plums. Antonia's is a working class family. Her husband's boss and his family may be sitting down to a dinner with an additional opening course, perhaps squid rings breaded "in a raincoat" and deep fried, or steamed prawns. We are not concerned about their richer meal. Ours is abundant and flavorful and we feel blessed. Our conversation is easy and happy, our companionship comfortable.
The acid tang of gazpacho affects the taste of most wines, so pairing it with wine is not easy and perhaps not even desirable. Spanish people may simply not drink anything with it, or may prefer beer. Most Spanish families set the table with pitchers of sangria in summer, not the heavily sugared, brandied party version familiar in the US but a simple combination of equal parts dry white wine and Casera water and a bit of chopped fruit. No sugar is added but a chopped peach or sliced orange may be added according to the season. Plenty of ice chills the pitcher. If the family is going to drink a bottle of wine more thought out than simply a local product drawn directly from the barrel into a bottle Antonia carried to the market from home, it is more likely to be paired and drunk with the main course, after the gazpacho. Antonia's family thinks simple sangria made with local wine is perfect with the whole meal in such hot weather. Even the youngest children, in this case aged 8 and 10, will have sangria with their dinner. Antonia half fills their glasses with chilled Casera water before pouring the sangria, however, to weaken it for them.
I was the fiancée of Antonia's youngest brother, the one born two years after the first of her six children was born. Such are Spanish village families. He and I dined with Antonia and her family as often as with his parents when we visited from Madrid, and it was at Antonia's where I stayed during the month-long August vacation, not in the same house with him. We were not yet married and local mores demanded the separation. Two of his nieces, close to my age, become dear friends. They had expressed surprise that an "Americana" should know how to cook and be interested in learning more, then taught me their favorite recipes, including several versions of gazpacho and its close cousin salmorejo.
You may think of Spanish gazpacho as a tomato, cucumber and pepper mixture, but gazpacho is far older than the arrival of tomatoes and peppers after Columbus carried them back to Spain from the New World. Indeed, it dates back to the basic fare of the Roman legions. Any Spanish cook knows many more gazpachos than the one tourists think is all there is.
Long before Empire was part of the Roman name, Roman soldiers were still marching within the Italian peninsula itself, trying to subdue the Etruscans and other neighboring tribes. As afternoon waned, they stopped to rest by a source of water and a place to help themselves to wild or cultivated vegetables and fruits. Their basic supply packs contained bread, salt, vinegar, olive oil and garlic. Bread a few days old tasted better when mixed with water and mashed with the other edibles they carried. Finding and picking a vegetable to crush into the mix was a bonus. Thus was the first gazpacho born, and it lives barely changed to this day.
Malaga, home province to the white village of this story, is actually home to gazpacho blanco, made with the gazpacho base of bread, garlic, salt, olive oil, vinegar and water plus almonds and white muscatel grapes. Tomato and pepper dishes, including red gazpacho, are said by Spanish gastronomes to be from La Mancha, the high steppe region south of Madrid where Don Quijote once roamed on Rocinante's back accompanied by the faithful (and always hungry) Sancho Panza. The green gazpacho I enjoyed at the home of a friend from Toledo had no tomatoes at all. Its cucumbers and parsley would have been familiar to the Roman soldiers who took gazpacho to Spain, although the mild green bell peppers would not. At any rate, in even the smallest and remotest villages of rural Spain, homemakers enjoy preparing the gazpachos of every region for a cold first course at daily family dinners. Antonia made different kinds several times a week in hot weather, as did her mother in her own home a ten-minute walk away.
Take the train north of Malaga a couple of hours and you come to Cordoba, ancient Andaluza city that was the birthplace of the Roman playwright and philosopher Seneca and later where the Moors built the famous mosque with the red and white striped horseshoe arches. The people of Cordoba call their version of gazpacho "salmorejo"; it has mostly tomatoes and in it and less water than the soupy gazpachos of other regions. To some it might seem to closely resemble fattoush, the tomato and bread salad of the Middle East. However, I suspect that the two dishes sprang up independently since the Catholic Kings ejected the Moors from Spain several months before they funded Columbus?s first journey of exploration. Salmorejo is topped with chopped hard-boiled eggs or a fried egg and sometimes serrano ham or other such ingredients as tuna or mussels.
In northeastern Spain, they like to add river prawns to their gazpacho. Near the Portuguese border in the west, the people take pride in their asparagus and egg gazpacho. There are other gazpachos based on beets or green beans, but they are less well known. Despite what some bastardized recipes in the US would have you believe, however, no gazpacho I tasted anywhere in Spain, from La Corunna to Malaga, Mérida to Lérida, over the course of five years living there ever contained any kind of hot pepper. Absolutely never. Bread, on the other hand--unusual in US gazpacho recipes--is an essential element.
When Antonia first married in the dark Civil War aftermath of hunger and political fears, her own father banished for life for the accident of having been assigned to the wrong city's Guardia Civil unit well before the war had even started, she did not have electrical kitchen appliances (1940s). She laboriously crushed every ingredient for her gazpachos in a wooden mortar and pestle. By the early 1970s, she had a hand-held stick blender (they were used in Europe rather than the jug blenders of the US long before becoming familiar in the US), but while the whole family appreciated its convenience, all insisted that hand-crushed gazpacho has better texture and taste. Antonia still made her salmorejos in the mortar and pestle just as she had as a newlywed.
Antonia's Red Gazpacho
1kg/36 oz. Roma (plum) tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 cucumbers, peeled and chopped
1 large green bell pepper, roasted, peeled and chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 sandwich-size baguette, soaked in cold water
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped (*not* optional!)
2-3 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
1 coffee spoon (about 1/2 tsp.) ground cumin
Generous slurp good olive oil
Generous slurp wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 litre/1 quart) very cold water
Ice cubes to taste
Place the vegetables, bread, garlic and parsley in a deep bowl and puree with the stick blender, or puree in the blender or food processor to desired texture. Add cumin, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper; combine well. Stir in water and add ice cubes. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve in a bowl with additional ice cubes if desired.
Fancy-schmancy restaurants garnish their gazpachos with additional diced vegetables, but I never met a homemade one that did, nor any in the kind of local restaurant where ordinary Spaniards rather than tourists eat. I never met a Spanish cook who thought gazpacho could possibly contain radishes or celery. Those are foreign neologisms. Eggs are not customary in homemade tomato gazpachos nor in neighborhood eateries. Likewise, nobody I knew ever used canned ingredients in gazpacho.
Tere's Salmorejo
1 kg/36 oz. Roma (plum) tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded and chopped
100g/3.5 oz. bread (baguette) crumbs, soaked in cold water and pressed dry
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 wineglass/3/4 cup good olive oil
4 soupspoons wine vinegar
Salt to taste
2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
50g/2 oz. serrano ham (or prosciutto), chopped
Whiz tomatoes and garlic in blender. Add soaked bread, vinegar and salt. With the motor running, add the oil slowly so it emulsifies. Chill and serve topped with the diced eggs and ham.
Salmorejo Cordobés
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 palmful salt
1 very large sweet green bell pepper, roasted, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 thick slices from a baguette
500g/ 18 oz. Roma (plum) tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded and chopped
250ml/1 cup extra virgin olive oil
Place garlic and salt in mortar; use the pestle to mash to a paste. Add green pepper and mash. Add and mash bread; stir all well. Mash in the tomatoes. Beat the mixture while slowly drizzling in the oil, so it will emulsify. Chill.
Alternatively, do it all in the blender.
Serve topped with halved hard-boiled quail eggs, slivered serrano ham, fried anchovies, tuna chunks or steamed mussels.
For a full main course, top with breaded fried rabbit.
Ajo Blanco con Uvas
White Gazpacho
200g/9 oz. stale bread, crusts removed
200g/9 oz. almonds, blanched and skinned
3 cloves garlic
150ml/1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
5 soupspoons white wine vinegar
1 palmful (about 2 tsp.) salt
1 litre/1 quart water
150g/7 oz. muscatel grapes, seeded
Soak the bread in water until softened, squeeze it out and put in a blender or processor with the almonds and garlic. Blend to a smooth paste, adding a little water if necessary. With the motor running, add the oil in a slow stream, then the vinegar and salt. Beat in some of the water, then pour the mixture into a tureen, wooden bowl or pitcher and add the remaining water. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt or vinegar if needed. The soup should be fairly tangy. Chill. Stir before serving in bowls, garnished with the grapes.
Gazpacho Verde
1 wineglass cold water
Handful almonds, peeled and blanched
1/2 small onion, diced
1 large clove garlic, chopped
Large bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped
2 cucumbers, chopped
2 sweet green bell peppers, roasted, peeled and chopped
1 day-old sandwich size baguette, soaked in cold water
60ml/1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
45ml/3 T. sherry vinegar
Salt to taste
Combine ingredients in blender and whiz to desired smoothness. Stir in a litre (quart) of icy cold water and serve with ice cubes.
River Prawn Gazpacho
16 river prawns (or large crayfish)
1kg/36 oz. ripe Roma tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 wineglasses/1 1/2 cups chilled chicken broth
1 cucumber, chopped
1 sweet red bell pepper, roasted, peeled and chopped
1 sweet green bell pepper, roasted, peeled and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 sandwich-size day old baguette, soaked in cold water and squeezed out
60 ml/1/4 cup good olive oil
Splash sherry vinegar
Salt to taste
Clean the river prawns well, removing the intestines but leaving on the shells. Bring a pot of water to the boil and add salt and a splash of wine vinegar. Add the prawns and cook until the shells have turned bright red. Remove to a plate and allow to cool. Retain 4 of them whole with their shells on; peel the rest.
Add remaining ingredients to blender and whiz. Adjust amount of broth to obtain the desired consistency. Chop the shelled prawns and stir in. Serve in four plates, the edge of each one garnished with one of the pawns still in its shell. You may top with a bit of chopped sweet basil or scallion if you like.
Asparagus and Egg Gazpacho
1 lb./250g fresh asparagus, trimmed and broken up
1/4 cup/60ml extra virgin olive oil
3/4 lb./185g stale baguette, crumbled, soaked 1 cup/250ml
icy cold water
1 small clove garlic
2 very large eggs, very lightly fried in olive oil
1/4 cup/60ml white sherry vinegar, or to taste
1/4 cup/60ml additional extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Wash asparagus thoroughly in cold water. Break bottoms off at their natural breaking point and discard or save for making vegetable broth. Break up remainder into short lengths. Save 8- 12 tips for garnish.
Heat oil in a wide skillet and add all the asparagus except the reserved tips and sauté on all sides until the asparagus is bright green but still only half cooked. Remove to a bowl with a slotted spoon then cook the tips gently in the same manner. Reserve these tips in a separate bowl.
Over a very low flame, gently fry the eggs only until the whites are barely set; do not allow to brown or the yolks to harden.
Put the asparagus (except reserved tips) soaked bread and water, garlic and eggs in food processor and add a generous handful of ice cubes. Whiz until smooth. Add vinegar, oil, salt and pepper and process. Add water as needed to obtain a pleasantly thick soup. Taste and adjust seasoning, oil and vinegar. Serve well chilled, the top of each bowl garnished with reserved asparagus tips.
Serves 4.
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Comments: 31
I'm trying to get to this, I just haven't had time yet.
First, this desert dweller thanks you from the bottom of her heart for a treasury of gazpacho recipes! Nothing is more delish when it's 115 out!
You have some rebel question marks marring your piece. The software you are writing in may be the culprit. I know that MS Word does some funky stuff when you copy and paste it into Gather. I've taken to composing in notepad - but if you are using a Mac, I'm afraid I have no experience with those machines.
A lovely read, and thank you again for the recipes. I can't wait to try them out!
Since wine is not an option in a "halal" diet, what non-alcohol substitute would you suggest, to replace the wine & sherry vinegar in most of these recipes? Would regular vinegar do?
GT
It is "flavorful" in every sense.
I LOVE gazpacho.
I love the way you cook!
I'm sure it was a favorite! It's such a beautiful place! Did you ever have a chance to take a trip up into the mountains to Ronda?
Thank you!
Marilyn