Recipe for today: Beat the heat with zingy, cool and refreshing Gazpacho Sevillano

By Leslie Brenner

Yipes! The mercury reached 112 degrees in Portland, Oregon yesterday! Let’s hope for quick relief for our friends in the Pacific Northwest.

Until the outdoor thermometer cooperates, delicious relief can be a cool bowl of Gazpacho Sevillano. Down here in hot-as-blazes Texas, it feels like this week opens gazpacho season, as our friends with gardens and farms have been gifting us with gorgeous heirloom tomatoes bursting with flavor. When a windfall like that happens faster than you can gobble up the treasures (or when finally start seeing tasty-looking tomatoes in the markets), it’s the moment to grab some cukes as well, pull out your sherry vinegar and plug in the blender.

Our recipe for the classic Spanish summer refresher is a smooth-as-silk, elegant, purist version; the headnote offers a couple of short-cuts for a quickie version that gratifies instantly and deliciously.

Pro-tip: You don’t even have to wait for it to chill in the fridge — just drop a couple of ice cubes in each bowl and enjoy right away!

RECIPE: Gazpacho Sevillano

Recipe for Today: The Greenest Gazpacho

By Leslie Brenner

Cucumbers, celery, green bell peppers, parsley and a serrano give this green gazpacho its gorgeous color. Raw almonds or cashews add body, and sherry vinegar provides zing and olive oil (use your best, freshest one) makes it silky and deep.

Because there is no bread in it, it is not technically a gazpacho, but that vinegar-and-nut vibe definitely makes it eat like one — not the vibrant tomatoey kind that’s the word “gazpacho” usually brings to mind, but its cousin ajo blanco, or white gazpacho. (Ajo blanco, beloved in its birthplace of Málaga, Spain, is made with bread, garlic, almonds, salt and sherry vinegar — and in summer, garnished with green grapes.)

Our Greenest Gazpacho is just the thing for a meatless Monday. (It’s vegan! And gluten-free!) It’ll keep you cool and happy all through the summer.

RECIPE: The Greenest Gazpacho

Celebrate tomato season with salmorejo (a cousin of gazpacho) or tomato-burrata salad

We like to eat pretty simply and lightly at home during summer — that is, when it’s just Thierry and me. When Wylie’s here, he’s happiest making something complicated and involved, with as many ingredients as possible, especially well marbled proteins — and bonus points for flambéing, searing in cast-iron on maximum heat so the smoke alarm goes off or finishing a sauce with a fat knob of butter.

While tomatoes are bursting with flavor, I’d be happy eating nothing more than tomato salad with crusty bread three nights a week — especially if it can be the burrata variation of a classic Caprese, just sliced heirloom tomatoes, burrata, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper.

I’m embarrassed to write about the salad, as it’s so obvious and doesn’t require a recipe. But it feels disingenuous to assemble a dish so frequently and never mention it once in years of publishing — especially as there are young cooks and beginning cooks who may be less familiar with it.

You probably already knew how to make it (maybe you have your own version). To me what elevates it is using great olive oil, the freshest and fruitiest you can find, and my favorite finishing salt, Maldon (love those large, fragile flakes). When burrata’s not to be had, good ricotta can be nice in its place, and of course mozzarella goes back to the classic, if you’re feeling more nostalgic.

Here’s an actual recipe for the burrata version, just for the record (or if you want to forward it to your 19-year old nephew who’s learning to cook):

Classic Gazpacho Sevillano also shows up constantly on our summertime table; it’s one of my favorite dishes of all time. But until recently, I had never made salmorejo, its close cousin from nearby Córdoba (though I mentioned it in a 2003 Los Angeles Times story that won me a James Beard Award). Both Córdoba and Sevilla are in Spain’s southern region of Andalusia, a hot region where cold soups refresh in the summer.

Salmorejo is a cold, smooth, creamy cold soup whose basic ingredients are fewer than gazpacho’s: just tomatoes, bread (quite a lot of it), garlic, oil and salt. Vinegar is commonly included, though it is not necessarily traditional. The traditional — and still ubiquitous — garnish duo is chopped hard-boiled egg and serrano ham.

At a reader’s request I pulled out my blender and my history books and began salmorejo R & D. (Yes, we love cooking to order: If there’s something you’d like us to cover, let us know!)

Claudia Roden tells us in her marvelous, encyclopedic 2011 book The Food of Spain something I hadn’t known when I wrote that long-ago gazpacho story: that Seville was the province where tomatoes were first grown in Spain, and that gazpacho was the meal that farm works made when they worked the vegetable fields. They actually carried with them a dornillo, the large wooden mortar and pestle used to pound the ingredients and made the gazpacho on the spot.

Roden describes salmorejo as “a thick, dense, creamy version of gazpacho made with more bread,” one that you find at all the flamenco festivals and other festive occasions, served with a glass of wine, as well as at “every bar and tavern in Córdoba, topped with chopped hard-boiled egg and bits of jamón serrano.”

In fact, there is quite a lot of bread in salmorejo. If gazpacho is like a liquid salad, salmorejo is like a liquid sandwich — though it eats like a refreshing cold soup. “Some recipes have as much bread as tomatoes,” writes Roden. Needless to say, Keto adherents need not apply.

Another Spanish cooking expert, Anya von Bremzen, calls salmorejo in her 2005 book The New Spanish Table “Andalucia’s other tomato and bread masterpiece.” She describes it as “a cream with a texture that falls somewhere between a dip and a soup,” and points out that besides being a soup, it’s also wonderful as an accompaniment for crudités or “a pile of poached shrimp.” She also likes to serve it in shot glasses as a tapa, topped with a poached or grilled shrimp on a skewer. (Note to self: do that!)

South of Córdoba in Antequera, a town about 30 miles north of the Mediterranean coast, a cousin of salmorejo called porra is garnished with bits of tuna. And of course you can garnish salmorejo with a wide variety of things — von Bremzen suggests small poached shrimp, diced cooked potatoes and/or chopped tomatoes and onions, or those small chunks of canned tuna.

Von Bremzen and Roden both offer recipes that look excellent, and that I’ll definitely get around to trying theirs. (Curiously, I didn’t find one among the 1,080 recipes in Simone and Inés Ortega’s 1080 Recipes. Originally published in 1972 by Simone Ortega, 1080 recetas de cocina, as it’s called in Spain, is known as the Bible of cooking for Spanish home cooks.)

This batch, made with a combo of yellow and red tomatoes, turned out more orange than red.

Instead I went with Spanish-American chef José Andrés, who published a brilliantly simple version in Food & Wine in 2017 (it’s always safe to side with a superhero!).

For his recipe, toss tomatoes, crustless rustic white bread, sherry vinegar, garlic, salt and water in the blender, give it a good, long, thorough blitz so it’s very smooth, stream in some olive oil as the motor’s running, then serve, garnished with torn slices of serrano ham, a swirl of olive oil and chopped hard-boiled egg. I was surprised at how little vinegar Andés calls for — just a teaspoon for 2 1/2 pounds of tomatoes — but it was perfect.

Got tomatoes? Here’s the recipe:

Once you try it as is, you might want to riff on it, adding more or less bread, vinegar and salt to taste, and of course playing with garnishes.

All the recipes I found called for chilling the soup before eating, but I don’t imagine those farm workers who invented it brought coolers, and I couldn’t wait; besides, things tend to be more flavorful when they’re room temperature.

In, any case, it was deliciously refreshing straight from the blender jar.

Happy tomato season!

[RECIPE: Salmorejo]

[RECIPE: Tomato and Burrata Salad]

Say hello to the green gazpacho of your dreams

There are a grillion versions of green gazpacho out there — many of them likeable, some (like Yotam Ottolenghi’s in Plenty) lovable. But I’ve never found one that made me stop and say, OK, you are the green gazpacho of my dreams.

I enjoy versions with yogurt, but the green gazpacho of my dreams is vegan. And even though a gazpacho without bread is technically not a gazpacho, the green gazpacho of my dreams is gluten-free. That’s because when I crave green gazpacho, I’m craving something very clean and pure. I’m wanting something intensely chlorophyllic, and herbal — but also tangy.

The green gazpacho of my dreams is something I can throw together in a flash, as a satisfying and energizing lunch, or a refreshing prelude to a lovely summer or late spring dinner. It should be basic enough to make for myself and family on a weekday, but gorgeous enough to start off a celebratory dinner party with friends (if we are ever able to do that again!).

It has to have body, and a little richness. I’ve seen recipes for versions involving avocado, but I’m nor looking for that kind of unctuousness. (Though I do adore diced ripe avocado as a garnish on classic Gazpacho Sevillano.)

Sometimes the way out of a culinary conundrum like this is to go back to the basics. I looked to traditional ajo blanco, the cold almond and garlic soup from Malaga, Spain that’s also known as gazpacho blanco, white gazpacho.

Yes! Raw almonds add just the right body to this soup, without the tannic bite that’s so nice with the walnuts in Ottolenghi’s Plenty version. If almonds work here, perhaps raw cashews would as well. I tried that on round two, and liked it even better — it imparted a little more roundness and depth. But either works great.

You’ll want to use your best sherry vinegar and olive oil in this soup; they are more than just supporting players.

Here is your ticket to summer-long green greatness:

As you can see in the recipe, the ingredients are basic, easy to keep on hand for when a craving comes knocking. No need for advance planning, as you don’t need to chill it; just plop two or three ice cubes in each bowl before you serve. Or make it ahead, and chill it in the fridge. For maximum delight, garnish it with a flurry of soft herbs — any combination of dill, chervil, parsley, cilantro, basil, mint, chives, tarragon, celery leaves and sliced scallion greens (OK, those last two are not technically herbs, but you get the idea). Or just add a swirl of your best olive oil on top.

RECIPE: The Greenest Gazpacho

How to be blown away by your own gazpacho

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If you cook a lot, you've probably made gazpacho before. Maybe you've even made it dozens of times. But how often has it blown you away?

Just as I thought.

And just as we're heading into prime tomato season, it seems the right time to give the perennially popular cold soup – whose birthplace is southern Spain – a fresh look. As I wrote in a story that snagged me a James Beard Journalism Award some years ago, the soup's roots go back a long way: It was born sometime between the 7th and 13th centuries (depending on who you ask). In any case, it pretty clearly predates the arrival of tomatoes in Europe, which may come as a surprise to anyone who knows gazpacho as a cold tomato soup with cucumbers and peppers thrown in. In fact, gazpacho was originally a cold soup of pounded bread, garlic and salt with olive oil and vinegar pounded in. Some of those ingredients are often forgotten by modern American cooks, which is one of the many reasons gazpacho so often falls flat. Bread is essential for body, garlic for a little bite and vinegar for zing; a olive oil adds silkiness and its own fruity personality. 

In the summertime, when the weather's hot and tomatoes are bursting with flavor, gazpacho is one of my favorite things to make and eat. 

I approach it one of two ways. If I want a quick-as-possible version, I soak bread in sherry vinegar, toss it in the food processor with chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, a red bell pepper, a little water, garlic, salt and a pinch of red pepper, give it a whirl and serve it right away with a couple of ice cubes in the bowl. Chopped cucumber, peppers and maybe scallions go on top as garnishes. It's pretty damn good.

But if I want a version that's absolutely stunning, I take just a couple of extra steps – peeling and seeding the tomatoes, straining the intensely-flavored juice that runs out of them and adding that to the sherry vinegar-soaking bread. I use a vegetable peeler to peel the red bell pepper. And after I purée the soup in the food processor, I give it a whirl with an immersion blender, to make it super-smooth and silky. The few minutes extra results in a gazpacho that's out-of-this-world elegant. 

A great Andalusian gazpacho depends on two things: ripe tomatoes with fabulous flavor, and the right balance of ingredients – including the vinegar and olive oil. If you get your hands on great tomatoes and use them in this recipe, I'm pretty sure you'll be blown away: 

Either way, I generally use the same or garnishes. If I make the super-smooth version, I'll take more care by dicing them finely rather then chopping them in a hurry – and sometimes add radishes and/or avocados. I can't think of a more stunning vegan summertime starter.

You can also follow the lead of chefs, and get all creative with the garnishes. Want to go super-splashy, maybe for a special dinner party? Top each bowl with a spoonful of lump crabmeat or diced cooked shrimp (or boiled tiny bay shrimp), plus some diced ripe avocado and a few pretty sprigs of frisée.

Whether you go the super-smooth route or the quicker route, I think you'll love it. Go ahead: Give it a whirl! 

 RECIPE: Gazpacho Sevillano

Flavors of Spain and Morocco on a most unusual New Year's Eve

It has been a difficult and even terrifying holiday season – thanks to several tornadoes that tore through North Texas the day after Christmas – for many of our neighbors and friends around Dallas, where we live. 

For my friend and colleague Seema Yasmin, her husband Emmanuel, and Seema's mom, Yasmin Halima, it was truly an ordeal, as their house was completely destroyed by a tornado. Emmanuel and Yasmin, unable to get to the safest part of the house, huddled in front of the refrigerator, clinging to Seema and Emmanuel's two-year-old pit bull, Lily, as their kitchen was hit. Seema, a medical doctor-turned-journalist who specializes in infectious diseases, was away in Liberia, reporting on survivors of the ebola epidemic there, when she had news of the disaster. She cut short her trip and arrived back in Dallas – but not home; that was gone – four days later. Emmanuel, Yasmin and Lily were staying in a hotel. 

My husband Thierry and I had planned to spend a quiet evening at home for New Year's Eve, so we invited them over New Year's Eve dinner. What to cook for friends who've been through (and are going through) such a traumatic experience? Seema and Yasmin don't eat meat unless it's halal; "consider us piscatarians," says Seema. When I mentioned the restriction to Thierry, he had one gleeful suggestion: paella! 

Perfect. We'd start with tapas and a bottle of Cava (for those who would partake). I whipped out my favorite Spanish cookbook – Anya von Bremzen's 2006 volume, The New Spanish Table – for tapas ideas. For a first course, maybe I'd whip up something involving piquillo peppers, tuna and allioli – lemony, super-garlicky Spanish mayonnaise, which is also great stirred into seafood paella. For a sweet, I turned south, reaching for a lovely dessert of poached pears and prunes scented with bay leaf and orange from Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco.

I found some beautiful organic red Bartletts at Whole Foods, with a couple days during which I could let them ripen in a paper bag. I poached them New Year's Eve morning. It's a great dessert for a dinner party, as it can be made completely in advance. Wolfert's recipe calls for 12 prunes, but I say the more the merrier and double them; they're so good with the pears – which I planned to serve with some thin almond crisps I picked up at the store.

For tapas, I settled on Sevillian marinated carrots – zanahorias aliñadas – that I'd set out with fleshy, green Castelvetrano olives and smoked almonds. Then we'd have a passed tapa inspired by one I saw in Anya's book: slow-scrambed eggs with wild mushrooms (I was hoping to find some chanterelles), to be served in brown egg shells. I took the eggs in a more French direction, using butter (lots!) rather than olive oil and shallots rather than garlic, as we had so much garlic going on in the paella, carrots and allioli. I couldn't find chanterelles, so instead I snapped up some beautiful cultivated beech mushrooms and small, fresh shiitakes.

Just as Seema and company rang the doorbell, blam!!! I dropped a glass bowl filled with eggs that I was pulling from the fridge. Eggs and broken glass went flying all over the kitchen and beyond – landing in the dining room, the living room, the breakfast nook. Brilliant! Thierry scrambled (hah!) to clean it all up (bless his heart!) as I welcomed our friends, apologizing for the chaos and putting up a fence of chairs to keep Lily from stepping on broken glass in the kitchen. 

Later, as we sat at dinner, Emmanuel and Yasmin – still pretty shellshocked – recounted their terrifying ordeal; they didn't have time to get to a safe room, which was probably a good thing, as the room they thought safest was bisected by a garage door torn from its hinges. Emmanuel was barefoot when the tornado hit, and there was broken glass everywhere; he stepped on a nail as they were walking the streets looking for help. He was carrying Lily at the time, all 65-pounds of her. Yasmin had shards of glass hit her face.

We knew it wouldn't exactly be an evening of revelry, considering all they been through and all they had lost, but I was hoping – with food cooked with love, and good cheer and the warmth of a fire in the fireplace – to make their holiday just a little bit less dreadful.

Lily, a sweet creature who is in training to be a therapy dog, was quite nervous, but they had brought her bed – which we set up in the dining room so she could be next to us. Once she settled in, we broke out the tapas. While everyone nibbled on the carrots – garlicky, lemony and fragrant with herbs – and the olives and nuts, I put the finishing touches on the eggs, scrambling them slowly with sautéed mushrooms in butter till they were custardy. (Fortunately I had eggs to spare!) I had just the thing for serving them: a fabulous ceramic egg carton my friend Michalene brought me as a gift from South Africa a few years ago.

Seema seemed to melt."Oooh," she said when I brought the egg carton to the table and offered her one. "I love anything with eggs." There were only five of us and half a dozen eggs, but it wasn't hard to find a taker for the last one.

Next came the peppers with tuna. I wasn't able to find piquillos – those slender, pointed Spanish red peppers with a lovely bite you can buy (if you're lucky) in a jar already roasted. Instead I found jars of whole roasted Spanish Morron peppers. Not as nice as the piquillos, whose shape is perfect for filling. I spooned some allioli onto of our salad plates, set a pepper on each and tucked in fillets of fancy tuna I'd bought in jars, packed in olive oil, into the peppers. The combo was actually pretty good – especially with some crusty baguette to sop up the extra allioli. 

Seafood paella was the main event, of course. Our recipe is based on the one from Anya's book, though I've tweaked it over the years. This time I found some beautiful baby octopuses to use in place of the squid Anya's recipe calls for. About 20 minutes before our friends arrived, I'd started cooking the paella, knowing I could prepare it up to a certain point, then leave it off-heat on the stove. I popped it into the hot oven, letting it bake while we had the tapas, and pulling it out to rest while we had the peppers and tuna. 

Some red wine – Garnacha from Spain (for a few of us) – those poached pears and prunes, and before midnight, the exhausted trio (um, woof! quartet) was ready to head back to their hotel. But not without an invitation to come back soon and cook: Yasmin, who was born in India, has lived in South Africa – where she worked for an international non-profit aid organization – and has roots in Burma, is already missing the kitchen.