Gazpacho de Andalucia
While studying abroad in Cordoba, Spain, I fell in love with gazpacho…a light tomato soup made simply with tomatoes, bread, olive oil, vinegar and garlic. There are many different recipes for gazpacho out there; I got this one from a postcard I found at a little bodega in Spain. This recipe is the real deal…I remember Encarna, my house mother, making gazpacho using just these five ingredients.
Legendary chef Jose Andres makes gazpacho by blending peppers and cucumbers into the mix. Well, I respectfully disagree…I like the peppers and cucumbers as garnish. I love Jose Andres and had the pleasure of meeting him once at his restaurant Zaytinya. He’s amazing! If you have not checked out his cooking show on PBS, Made in Spain, I highly recommend that you do. It’s part cooking and part Spanish adventure. Check out the TV schedule or visit the Web site.
Anyway, back to the gazpacho. This dish is perfect for a hot summer evening–by itself or with other assorted tapas. We made this gazpacho with about 4 pounds of second tomatoes that we got from the farmers’ market. One time last summer when we made this dish, we got about 4 pounds of red and yellow tomatoes. With that many tomatoes, we had to make the gazpacho in 2 batches. So we did one batch of just the red tomatoes and the other of just the yellow ones. We served it in a flat soup bowl with the red gazpacho on one side and the yellow gazpacho on the other. It looked beautiful and tasted amazing! We didn’t get any photos, unfortunately, but we’ll try to replicate it again this summer and post photos. That tomato haul also led to the very delicious Heirloom Tomato Salsa. I can’t wait for tomato season to REALLY begin!
The recipe I use for gazpacho doesn’t have any measurements, so you’re going to have to eyeball it and do a lot of taste testing.
Gazpacho de Andalucia
Ingredients:
- Tomatoes (at least 2 pounds)
- Bread (a good size piece of day-old bread)
- 1 clove garlic
- Olive oil
- Vinegar
- Salt
- Petite diced peppers and cucumber for garnish
Directions:
- Remove the skins from the tomatoes. You can do this by either dropping the tomatoes in hot water for a few seconds and then using a pairing knife to remove the skins or you can chop the tomatoes and press them through a food mill, which will send the juices and seeds (depending on the size of the grate you use) through. Seeds are OK, the only part of the tomato that you don’t want are the skins and core (and any bruised parts, if you’re using second tomatoes).
- Put the tomatoes (either the juice from the food mill or roughly chopped peeled tomatoes) in a blender. Tear off pieces of bread and add to blender. (To give you and idea of how much…we used about 1/2 a baguette for the 4 pounds of tomatoes. But we had to make the gazpacho in 2 batches…so I guess about 1/4 of a baguette per roughly 2 pounds of tomatoes.) Add 1 clove garlic, pressed or chopped. (One clove garlic per batch.)
- Blend until smooth. If it’s too liquidly, add a few more pieces of bread. The texture shouldn’t be to liquidly or too thick, and there shouldn’t be any visual or taste-able bread particles.
- Once the texture is good, add several pinches of salt, a decent amount of olive oil, and a proportional amount of vinegar (several splashes). Sherry vinegar from Spain is the best to use, but a few dashes of apple cider vinegar also helps to bring out the tomato flavor.
- Blend together.
- Serve chilled with petite diced peppers (any color) and cucumbers.
Sugar Plums
Sugar plums are a kind of confection and a delicious variety of plums. I have never tried the confection, but this weekend we picked up a couple handfuls of the plums. They were so ripe, the felt like they were about to burst. Sugar plums are a lot smaller than normal plums and look like a large grape. They were very sweet with a hint of tartness. A++++ Would buy again.
J.K. Adams
J.K. Adams
1430 Route 30,
Dorset, VT
Part of: Vermont 08 - Cheese & Tasty Things Tour
After reading all of the recent posts it may seem like all that Vermont has is cheese. This is completely untrue. They actually have two things–the other is maple syrup. To make lots of maple syrup you need lots of maple trees, which incidentally also make really nice cutting boards.
J.K. Adams is a kick ass cutting board manufacturer located in Dorset, Vermont. Dorset is a bit in the middle of no where but it is worth the drive because these guys are the real deal. You can buy their cutting boards in Williams Sonoma and Crate & Barrel. They also have a great kitchen store at their factory. We…ok, really me…went a little nuts there. I ended up buying two end grain butcher blocks and a great laser etched serving tray.
The story behind the J.K Adams logo is an interesting one. Back in Colonial times, foresters marked the best trees with an arrow, and those trees were used to make ships for the British royal fleet. J.K. Adams uses the arrow logo to symbolize that they, too, use the best wood for their products.
End grain cutting boards are the best kind you can get and will last forever. In normal wooden cutting boards the grain of the wood is perpendicular to the blade of the knife. As you cut things, you also make cuts in the wood. With end grain boards, the wood grain runs parralel to the blade of the knife. Instead of cutting the wood, the knife blade pushes the wood fibers aside. This helps the board last longer. Instead of just having a board of wood lying flat, shorts piece of wood are stacked on end and glued together to form a cutting board. I think I have done a horrible job of explaining this, hopefully the pictures help. The take away is that end grain cutting boards are big honking boards that makes cutting things up fun…and J.K. Adams makes a damn fine board.
The “smaller” board is maple. They stopped making the grain board using maple and have switched to cherry. The cherry wood gives the block more variety in tone, which gives the boards an interesting pattern. The larger board is cherry. We got a great price on the maple one though since it was the last of the old stock.
So besides the 30 lbs of butcher block we bought, we also got a really cool laser etched serving board. They have a number of different designs, all of which look pretty awesome.
One of the cool things about their Kitchen Store is an observation deck where you can watching them making all of the different products. Unfortunately when we visited the production lines weren’t running.
Grafton Village Cheddar
Grafton Village Cheese Shop
33 Townshend Road
Grafton, VT 05146
800-472-3866
Daniel’s House Café
92 Main St
Grafton, VT 05146
800-843-1801
Part of: Vermont 08 - Cheese & Tasty Things Tour
Our visit a couple of years ago to Grafton Village Cheese Company is what really planted the seed in our minds for our ‘08 Cheese Tour. Grafton Cheddar defines what good cheddar should taste like. One of the best parts of visiting is that you can try all of the different flavors and ages of cheese that they make. One of the other benefits of visiting is that they sell blocks of cheese that they have miss cut at a discount. These blocks are either a little over or under weight. We picked up about a pound of 4 year old cheddar for $5!
There is a window where you can look in on the cheese making area…unfortunately we showed up when nothing was going on. Maybe next time!
Just as we were leaving, I came across this quite little newt wandering through the parking lot. I thought the right thing to do would be to move it closer to the neighboring stream. I left it on a tree stump, but the newt promptly walked off the edge and free fell down the bank. Newts are real. I looked them up on the Internet later and it looks like the newt may have been slightly poisonous. It is only really dangerous if you touch the newt and then lick your fingers…like you might do while eating a sample of delicious cheese you just purchased. Luckily there were no fatalities on this tour.
There is also a nice little cafe in Grafton that we always visit called Daniel’s House Cafe. They have great sandwiches, some featuring Grafton Cheddar. Grafton is also a beautiful place to visit, so make sure you poke around.
I also have to share one recipe from their website. I haven’t tried it yet, but combining two bottles of beer and a lot of cheese can only result in something pretty damn tasty.
Cheddar Cheese Soup
From: Grafton Village Cheese
Ingredients:
- 2 12 oz cans or bottles of beer
- 1 qt heavy cream
- 1 lb grated Grafton Cheddar
- 2 Tbs flour
- 1/3 cup melted butter
- 1/8 tsp ground white pepper
- 1/4 tsp salt
Directions:
- Heat melted butter and mix in flour to make a roux. Remove from heat. Cook until smooth.
- Boil beer and whisk in roux. Cook until thickened. Add cream and bring to just under boiling. Whisk in cheese until melted. Add salt and pepper.
- Serve with croutons. Serves eight.
Frederick Donaldson
Public Relations
Long Trail Brewery
Long Trail Brewery
Junction of Route 100a and 4
Bridgewater Corners, VT 05035
Part of: Vermont 08 - Cheese & Tasty Things Tour
You know there is something special about a place when the employees stick around after hours. It does help if that place is a brewery…but it is still a good sign. We stopped by Long Trail right at the end of the day, just when everyone who works there was getting off work and heading to the restaurant/beer garden out back.
In order to be bold and adventurous, we ordered the sampler. This let us try the 6 different beers they have on tap. All of the beers were good, not amazing, blow your mind great, but definitely tasty. My favorite was the Double Bag, which is a Double Bock style beer that is real smooth but will give you a kick in the pants. They definitely make good, solid beer. Nothing too flashy or showy, but more chill and laid back. One of the best parts of the visit was the outdoor beer garden (back deck) they have that over looks a neighboring stream.
I would sum up Long Trail by saying it is a beer you can respect and a company you can love. The unfortunate thing is that they do not distribute down here in DC.
We had a little bit of trouble finding them. There address is listed at the juncture of 100a and Route 4. The thing is that there are two different junctures for these roads. They are located at the juncture that is further east.
Just to be clear, those are small glasses in the sampler, not pint glasses. Hi Mom and Dad!
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