"gazpacho" news and stories

You can't talk about cold soups without talking tomatoes. Garden-fresh gazpacho is the go-to soup for summer. If you roast the tomatoes, as in this Kitchen Daily recipe, you'll add depth of flavor. On the sweeter side, though, is a chilled soup of yellow tomatoes blended with sweet yellow peppers and banana peppers, along with garlic and herbs.

Blogger Chiot's Run not only makes tomato soup, she cans it, along with pickles and sauerkraut. (See her recipes here). On a cold winter's day, to taste the tomatoes of summer (not the bland hothouse stuff that's around then), is a gift. So if you're ready to boil the Ball jars, and set up a canning operation, go for it (and check out Eugenia Bone's how-to book Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods). And for pickling, you can't beat Chris Schlesinger, John Willoughby, and Dan George's Quick Pickles: Easy Recipes for Big Flavor.

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• Raw gazpachos dish up the best of fresh summer produce in one lively slurp.
• The produce aisle is increasingly becoming a land of "identity crisis," as fruits are no longer distinguished by their specific, telling varieties but strictly by their generic names.
• The dark, roasted Grand Teton Brewing Black Cauldron may seem like an unlikely choice for the June beer of the month, but it "positively cries out for grilled steak."
• After a stint at Blue Velvet, chef Kris Morninstar is back with gutsy fare at District, which is "all about flavor and integrity of ingredients."
• Restaurant recruiter Brad Metzger has created the ultimate chef playhouse, with an exquisite private kitchen set up to allow chefs to try out for jobs with prospective employers.

Happy National Gazpacho Day!

Perhaps a strange fit for the cold winter months, gazpacho is a summertime soup originating in Andalusia, Spain. The chilled, raw soup is typically made as a puréed or finely chopped mixture of a variety of ingredients, traditionally involving fresh tomatoes, bell peppers, celery, cucumber, onions, vinegar, olive oil, lemon and, on occasion, breadcrumbs -- in fact the word "gazpacho" is derived from the Arabic word for "soaked bread."

But the dish's elements vary regionally, and incorporate toppings ranging from croutons to scallions to hard-boiled eggs. Notes the New York Times, "The origins of gazpacho are as hotly debated as the proper ingredients."

Today, the term may be used loosely to non-tomato-centric chilled soups that share the same preparation methods, with bases ranging from cucumbers to mangoes. Hop over to the New York TImes' "Gazpacho: Themes and Variations" for a more detailed background on the soup, as well as a stellar classic gazpacho recipe, a seafood variation and an ajo blanco (grape gazpacho with garlic and almonds).

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Bean-and-rice salad. Photo: Natalie Maynor, Flickr

• Rice is the overlooked salad base for summer fare.
• Even with the tomato blight, it's still the season for a nicely chilled gazpacho -- whether classic and tomato-y, or perked up with a few almonds or peaches.
• Eesh! According to the National Cancer Institute, only 1 percent of kids are meeting the healthy food intake suggestions set forth by the USDA Food Guide Pyramid.
• Make the most of your vegetables with Two-For-One Veggies and Salad.
• Wine of the Week: 2007 Macmurray Ranch Pinot Noir -- it's "substantial," but not "heavy."
• Recipes: Dal and dog treats.
• Hartford's food calendar.

Gazpacho. Photo: Emily Farris, Fifty Bucks a Week.

Each week, we round up the top food articles we've spied Web-wide. This week, a special edition of our own bloggers' primo pieces from elsewhere on the Web.

Pervaiz Shallwani boards a bus with a stripper pole alongside a bunch of bartenders to harvest rye in upstate New York ... for Gourmet ... really.

"Mad Men" fiend Eric Diesel reveals his recipe for perfectly "clean" martinis -- a 2-to-1 gin-to-vermouth concoction at his Urban Home blog.

Mike Pomranz on the phenomenon of a cat opening a jar of food at Comedy Central.

Bruce Watson reports at sister site DailyFinance that the United States may "run out of sugar" in the next year!

Cook and film buff Monika Bartyzel notes that Michael Moore might be done with the documentary style that made him famous, for Cinematical.

Gretchen Roberts, our savvy sommelier-in-training, offers freebie gourmet treats at her wine blog Vinobite.

CoffeeMeister Erin Meister makes peace with the five-second-rule over at her culinary blog, the Nervous Cook.

Joshua M. Bernstein visits Scores, a Manhattan strip club, to eat steak (again, really!) for the New York Press.

Emily Farris tries to toe the budget line with a basic, beautiful gazpacho at Fifty Bucks a Week.