A little while ago a friend of mine sprained his wrist falling off his bike after hitting a pothole on a poorly-maintained Montreal street. This significantly impaired his ability to chop vegetables, open packages, and wash dishes, resulting in a slew of lackluster – and extremely long – meals.
Despite this, he still managed to help me move 5 self-watering containers from another friend’s house to my second floor balcony. He did it one-handed, navigating my precarious staircases without complaint. I paid him in a couple of beers and a promise to make whatever he wanted for dinner. (Re-reading that paragraph, I seem like an awful person for forcing him to help me, but he insisted he was okay. And if it makes you feel any better, I felt awful about it).
His vote for dinner was a green grape gazpacho. “What’s the recipe?” I asked him. He didn’t have one in particular, so I referenced my encyclopedic collection of cookbooks. And the internet. My New York Times Cookbook won.
I used the NYT Cookbook as a starting point. In it is a recipe for white gazpacho with almonds and grapes, but it calls for a blender, and we had lots of time to kill and a love of varied texture…
So I chopped. Goodness knows I need better knife skills.
The truth is I don’t much like gazpacho. It’s usually too tomato-y, acidic, and it never fills me up. All the raw vegetables go into the bottomless hole that is my stomach, which doesn’t realize until much later that I fed it plenty and it should shut up already. The appeal of Andalusian gazpacho is that it’s not tomato-heavy. We put 3 fresh tomatoes only in this giant bowl of gazpacho that fed 4 people the first day and lasted for leftovers for 3 more, replenished with an extra tomato and cucumber here and there along the way. Another problem with traditional gazpacho is that often soaked bread (not gluten-free, obviously) is used to thicken it. That was also true in this case, but I used a tapioca-rice bread that had a buttery, salty flavour and went perfectly with the bitter, Spanish extra-virgin olive oil I love from La Maison Orphée here in Quebec. And I don’t usually love olive oil. My manually impaired friend lived in Spain for awhile and soaks everything in it, but I’m more reserved about it. In this recipe the bread and oil were key. They also helped remind my stomach that it was full in a way chopped peppers never can.
If you skip the bread it won’t be as thick and creamy, but you can keep it raw by leaving it and the pasteurized vinegars out – use a raw apple cider vinegar instead.
The crunchy texture is a huge draw here (and my friend was impressed I’d do it all by hand for him). Puréeing it all would mush the flavours together. The goal is to make every bite containing a piece of parsley a surprise, every bit of grape a revelation. So do this when you have the time, or use a food processor that will chop – not blend – the ingredients. Work on your knife skills and keep your fingers tucked under, lining the knife up with your knuckles.
Remember: A pothole is one thing, but self-inflicted injuries are even less fun. And you can’t even curse at the city about that. You’ll have no one to blame but yourself. And trust me, biking to the emergency room at 11pm after cutting open your hand with a sharp knife while chopping cabbage is not the story you want to tell the overnight doctor at 2am as she stitches you up. That’s a true story…
Andalusian Green Grape and Almond Gazpacho
Vary the amounts of vegetables as you like – an extra pepper, no tomatoes, more parsley, etc.). It’s gazpacho, not rocket science.
1/2 cup blanched whole almonds (or halves or slices – it’s all fine)
1/2 tsp salt
3 slices bread, crusts removed if they’re thick and you think they’ll affect the flavour of the gazpacho (traditionally, stale bread is used. I used frozen gluten-free rice-tapioca bread. You don’t even need to thaw it. Don’t use a whole grain bread like whole wheat, ancient grain, or gluten-free buckwheat or dense red or black rice. It may make the gazpacho bitter. A fluffy, white bread like the tapioca-rice I used had a buttery, salty flavour despite being gluten- and dairy-free)
4 cups water (use ice water if your bread isn’t frozen)
6 tbsp Spanish olive oil (or just very fruity, buttery, strong flavoured olive oil)
5 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp balsamic vinegar (traditionally you use 3 tbsp white wine vinegar and 2 tbsp sherry vinegar, but I didn’t have sherry vinegar and this worked fine)
3 cups green grapes, quartered (reserve a little for garnish)
3 red, orange, green or yellow peppers, diced
1 cucumber, diced
1/2 avocado, diced
3 tomatoes, diced
2 apples, diced
1/2 – 1 bunch parsley, diced (reserve a little for garnish)
Place the almonds and salt in the blender. Soak the bread in 1 cup water and squeeze gently to moisten. Squeeze out excess moisture and add to blender (remove the crusts now if you want). Add two cups of water to blender (you can use the soaking water) and blend until smooth. Slowly drizzle in 5 tbsp of the olive oil (keep the blender going while you do this – it’s like making mayonnaise. It’ll help it emulsify). Then add the vinegars and let blend for 2 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and vinegar if necessary. Transfer to a VERY large bowl and refrigerate the bowl while you chop the vegetables.
Chop the remaining ingredients and add to large bowl, reserving a little avocado, parsley, cucumber and/or grapes for garnish if you wish. Feel free to remove the skin of the cucumber and apple if you want the gazpacho a little softer, and remember that the finer you chop it the easier it will be to eat. It also looks amazing and you’ll be proud of your work. Use a very sharp knife, especially for the grapes and tomatoes.
Mix vegetables with purée in large bowl well. Garnish with reserved vegetables and fruits.
Smile. Eat. Smile.
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