It may be silly to get excited about gazpacho, but I just can't help myself. 6 or 7 weeks ago, as I was still getting ready harvesting and preserving all the stuff from the garden, I racked my brain to come up with easy things to preserve. If I hadn't been so strict with my preservation, I probably would have had more food stored, but I was trying to stick to the rules I gave myself: only things from the garden using only salt.
One of the things I was able to scrape together from my really poor harvest was gazpacho. Of course, I only used my old vegetarian cookbook recipe as I guideline and I made up my own, using only what I had growing in the back yard.
One of my many problems this year that I tried hard to solve was how to preserve cucumbers, because I had tons of them. I made jars and jars of wild fermented pickles, but after awhile they turned into inedible mush that the chickens wouldn't even eat. I baked cucumber slices and made "chips" out of them, but it took forever to bake out enough water out, to be able to store them. What was left was really thin, tasteless snacks that probably contained none of the nutrition of the original cucumber. You'll find no good recipes that you can freeze or can. Except gazpacho...
My old vegetarian cookbook that I've had for a hundred years calls for a bunch of pureed tomatoes, with assorted peppers, a bunch of different herbs, onions, vegetable broth and a single cucumber. That wasn't going to help me with my population of cucumbers and not very many tomatoes. So I made up my own recipe, using the vegetables that I had, in the proportions that used as many cucumbers as I thought I could get away with.
I really didn't follow the recipe as far as the pureed tomatoes either. I only had cherry tomatoes. My larger ones got blight and were unusable. So I chopped them coarsely. I did the whole thing the same way I make my salsa. A bunch of stuff chopped up, with some salt.
As I made this pretty large batch, I just kept adding and tasting as I went. I mixed up the flavors until I thought it was finished. Onion, some garlic leaves, parsley, oregano & basil, tomatoes, celery & cucumbers. I just left it as is, with some salt and hoped that the existing vegetables would make enough juice for it to be soup-like.
I was actually really happy with it, but there was one problem. I wasn't sure what would happen after it was frozen. Some uncooked or non-blanched vegetables get yucky and mushy when frozen and thawed. I know peppers and basil can be frozen raw, but all the other stuff was recommended to be cooked before freezing.
So, when I left one in the fridge to thaw a few days ago, I wasn't expecting much. I figured it would be another experiment on this journey that just ends up in the chicken coop. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised. All the different ingredients thawed quite well, and not mushy. And there was a nice amount of moisture, so I stirred it up really well to give it a salsa-like consistency. I was also surprised how fresh it tasted. With gazpacho, I think the colder, the better.
I think that even if I wasn't trying to eat only what I grow, I would make this again. I love that I don't need a recipe, I can just wing it, and come up with something really good. I can't guarantee that everyone would like it. You have to already like cold soup, but if you do, this comes pretty darn close.
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| I didn't have pictures of my gazpacho, but this is something else I made... |
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