Thursday, August 27, 2009

101 Uses for a Ripe Garden Tomato*: #3--Cold Soup


I LOVE soup. I especially LOVE tomato soup. But the idea of cold soup? Cold tomato soup? Blech!

When you've got a lot of fresh garden tomatoes, you'll try making just about any dish with tomatoes in it. That's how I got around to finally trying gazpacho.

Before I decided how to make gazpacho, I read a bunch of my cookbooks, and then I searched the web, and then, of course, I threw all that aside and made it up as I went along.

It turns out that gazpacho is just my kinda dish--perfect for making up as you go along, that is. I threw some roasted tomatillos in the blender with some chopped vegetables (tomatoes--a lot, red onion, green onion, celery, garlic, sweet red pepper, jalapeno, and cucumber*), as well as a mushy slice of wheat bread, white wine vinegar, lime juice, olive oil, and salt & pepper. I combined the blended mixture with some of the same vegetables, finely chopped, and then refrigerated the whole shebang overnight. Tonight, I served it room-temperaturish--yeah, I know it's supposed to be cold--for dinner with more of the finely chopped vegetables, minced parsley, chopped avocado, and lime slices for garnish. (Other dishes were toasted garlic bread & beer-battered eggplant slices w/ red pepper tomato sauce. Not bad.)

Guess what? I LIKE cold tomato soup! (But maybe not as much as my homemade roasted tomato soup.) And now tomorrow's lunch is a no-brainer. (Guess what I had for lunch today? No really, guess. Grilled eggplant. And, yes, my co-workers think I'm at least a little weird. Also, I have no idea how I'll survive when they order us NOT to bring our lunches.)

*All veggies were from our garden except the cucumber. No cucurbits this year because of the last two year's morally devastating infestation of cucumber beetles.

More tomatoes tomorrow? Probably...

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