Over the years, I must have made at least twenty different gazpachos, always searching for the perfect one, which for me needs to be cool and crunchy and have a certain yin-yang balance of salty and sweet. I decided to try red onion instead of the traditional yellow in the basic recipe, and there I found the sweetness I had been looking for. The crunch comes from other untraditional ingredients: red radishes, white radishes, or jicama. Just exactly my daughter Lexie’s kind of gazpacho! For simple dinners on the terrace, I bring this to the table in a pitcher and serve it in chilled clear glasses. Allow enough time for it to really chill. In this case, the colder it is, the better.
Lexie’s Favorite Gazpacho
Ingredients:
- 6 ribs celery
- 1 bunch radishes, trimmed and quartered
- 1 medium-size red onion, quartered
- 1 medium-size cucumber, peeled, seeded, and cubed
- 2 medium-size carrots, trimmed
- 1 fresh chili pepper, stemmed and seeded (optional)
- 6 cups tomato juice
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1⁄2 cup beef broth (or vegetable, canned is fine)
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon celery salt
- Tabasco sauce to taste
- freshly ground black pepper to taste
Trim the leafy ends from two celery ribs and place in a food processor. Set aside the other ribs. Add all the vegetables and chop them coarsely in batches in the food processor. Do not puree them. Add the tomato juice, lemon juice, beef broth, Worcestershire, and celery salt and season with Tabasco and black pepper. Taste as you go along. Chill for at least 2 hours. Serve with the remaining ribs of celery.
With permission from Hampton Weekends: Easy Menus for Casual Entertaining All Year Round, by Ellen Wright