It's summer. It's hot. It's hard to imagine anything, if you're a tomato lover, more purely thrilling and chilling than a great bowl of gazpacho.
Dive in. Lift your spoon, take a sip. Perfectly smooth, more satin than silk, it's a burst of flavor in your mouth: ripe tomato, but bright _ uplifted by the lovely soft tang of sherry vinegar.
That is the taste of summer: essential.
Garnishes skitter on top, and that's where the fun begins, the play. Finely diced cucumber, bell pepper, croutons, maybe radish. Small cubes of avocado make it sexy. If it stops there, you've got a spectacular vegan treat. Classic.
Or it could get fancy, with chopped anchovy, grated cured egg yolk, sliced Spanish olives with their happy red pimento centers. Either way, there are few things that speak as deliciously, refreshingly of summer.
That's the red one everyone knows, gazpacho sevillano. There are also white gazpachos _ rich and almondy and grapy. And green gazpachos, such as chef Yotam Ottolenghi's glorious blitz of cukes, celery, spinach, basil, parsley (find it in his wonderful cookbook Plenty).
But there's nothing like the essential, Andalusia's classic red.
Gazpacho's origin goes way back, to sometime between the 7th and 13th centuries, when it was pounded bread with garlic, salt, olive oil, vinegar. Eight hundred years later, each of those ingredients remains essential. The icy soup's showier, fresher players _ tomato, cucumber, peppers _ showed up along the way. Tomato + bread + olive oil + tang = nirvana.
So where can you splash into a bowl? Si Tapas in Uptown used to make a good one, but recently it was tart, bitter, perhaps spoiled. I can't think of anyplace else that has one on the menu.
Happily, you don't need a restaurant. You can make it at home. Make it ahead. Keep it around. Serve it to people you really like.
You see that display of tomatoes _ the ripe ones, big and maybe ugly, fruits of deep color, bursting skin? That's what you want. Buy lots. You're halfway there. Make sure you have a great, fruity olive oil.
Some cooks whirl up a quick, chunky throw-everything-in-the blender version, and that's nice and easy. In Spain the aesthetic is smooth as possible, strained to silky elegance. Try it that way, and your mind may be blown.
