Gazpacho

I wanted to make a locally sourced dish for a "slow food" event here in Dallas. Of course I turned to the clever folks at Serious Eats for some pointers. I was less interested in a recipe from them, much more interested in techniques to create something like I have had in Spain. There were several obvious things and a couple of genius ahas. With a twist of my own at the end.

I didn't want this to be liquid salsa, nor did I want cold canned tomato soup. I wanted something special. That meant the ripest tomatoes that I could find (thank you Coppell Farmers' Market and the Fisher Family Farm), and locally grown peppers and onions.

First the Serious Eats genius:

• Cut up the vegetables and salt them all together. This extracts a lot of juice.
• Pour that juice over the bread and leave to stand
• Freeze the remaining vegetable parts. The recipe said 30 minutes, but I needed a full hour. But I was making a larger quantity.
• Thaw the vegetables and add them to the bread/juice. Keep some juice back

And the personal addition? The reserved juice after thawing is frozen into tomato-y ice cubes to be served with the soup to keep it cold, but not to dilute the flavors..

For serving - because this was a potluck event, I used a wine decanter. And had some olive oil, croutons, sea salt, sherry vinegar to act as final flavorings. It turned out to be a useful way to serve it because it could then be poured into glasses,