Gazpacho - Liquid Diet

My entire family – Mom, Dad, a set of my parents’ friends to keep them entertained, sisters, their husbands plus one tiny niece with full baby accoutrements – have all gone off to Cabo San Lucas. Family trip. Family vacation. A full five days of wreaking semi-dysfunctional havoc on the Baja peninsula by the entire Delicious family.

That is, the entire Delicious family, minus one.

Me.

The reasons why I am still here in LA while the rest of my family is on their way to go wrangle various large seagoing creatures out of the Pacific are too many and too complicated to explain, but if you guessed that it has partly to do with the fact that Greyhound doesn’t go to Cabo, and partly to do with the fact that even though it’s my family it was basically a “couples” trip, then you’re partly right.

Unfortunately, I can’t, and therefore shan't, reveal the other “partly to do with”s, but I can assure you that it has absolutely nothing to do with gazpacho.

You see, the popular misconception is that gazpacho is a soup, in which case, one could certainly argue that I would not be allowed to board a plane if I were smuggling a tiny thermos of gazpacho across the US-Mexico border, clearly making it a contributing factor to my decision not to got to Cabo. However, gazpacho is, in fact, a salad, as we have already defined a salad to be any preparation of raw vegetables. So clearly, I would be able to fly with gazpacho because it is a salad, thereby making gazpacho irrelevant to my being left behind in LA. But clearly, the gazpacho is a liquid because you have to either drink it or use a spoon, so we have all fallen victim to one of the Classic Blunders, the most famous of which is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” but only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line," and the least well known of all: “Gazpacho is from Spain, so eating it to spite your family vacationing in Mexico is stupid even though there is no such thing as 'speaking Mexican.' ”

I promise, there was no vodka involved in the making of this gazpacho. There was also no bread, which is a traditional ingredient in gazpacho to give it "body," but at this time, I have too much body. :)

Vegetable Gazpacho
In the bowl of a food processor, buzz 2 cloves of garlic until finely minced.

Add the following, peeled, seeded, and chopped:
1 large or 2 small cucumbers
4 or 5 large ripe tomatoes (I actually did not peel the tomatoes because I did not have the patience to cut small Xs in the bottom, dunk them in boiling water for a few seconds, and peel them.)
1 serrano or jalapeno pepper
1 red bell pepper
1 red onion

Pulse until chopped, then add and pulse again until you get the desired consistency:
¼ c. extra-virgon olive oil
2 T fresh lemon juice
2-3 c. water to the desired consistency (some people use beef or chicken broth, or tomato juice)
salt and black pepper to taste

Chilling the gazpacho for a few hours will let the flavors blend, but I didn't find a big flavor difference between eating it right out of the food processor and the next day.

** a year ago today, my espresso mocha cupcakes with vanilla cream frosting gave sprinkles a run for their $3.25 **

tags :: food : and drink : spanish : cooking : recipes : los angeles