What's For Supper - Gazpacho and Salad with Homemade Pickled Red Onions

When it's hot hot hot and you have no air conditioning, a cold supper is just the ticket. Chilled Gazpacho and a crispy salad - yum! If you can, make the soup in the cool early morning and let it chill all day. At suppertime, all you have to do is throw the salad together and dish up the gazpacho. Supper!

First, pull your ingredients together:

4 tomatoes,  1 cucumber,  5 small sweet peppers,  1/4 red onion, 3 garlic cloves, 1 lime, 3 c. tomato juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dried cumin, Tabasco, fresh basil, salt and pepper. Ready!

Roughly chop the tomatoes. Peel and seed the cucumber and roughly chop. Cut the tops off of the peppers and chop in half. Roughly chop the onion. Zest and juice the lime. Mince the garlic.

OK, at this point, I used my brand new Cuisinart to start chopping the veggies. I don't quite know how to use it yet. If you have a Cuisinart and know how to use it properly, go for it!



Chop the tomatoes, cucumber, onion and peppers separately and throw it into a bowl.

You can also use a blender, which is probably what I should have done, but I really wanted to play with my new Cuisinart!

Mix all the veggies together, then add the tomato juice, lime zest and juice, about 1 T. balsamic vinegar, 1 T. olive oil, 1/4 t. cumin, minced garlic, as much Tabasco as you like (be careful!), salt and pepper.



At this point, you can decide if you are happy with the texture. It was a bit too chunky for me, so I used our immersion blender to smooth it out.

This was probably a little too smooth, but that immersion blender can be mesmerizing...bzzzzzzzz...


Cover the soup and chill for at least two hours. Right before supper, throw a salad together. I used chopped romaine hearts, pickled sliced beets, homemade pickled red onion (recipe to follow) and crumbled feta.

Supper! Garnish the soup with sliced avocado and fresh basil. I also have an Asiago cheese/garlic breadstick on the side.

 

So here's how to make pickled red onions. It's so easy!

Peel a red onion. Halve it lengthwise, then slice thinly into half-rings. Or, I guess, you could use your handy Cuisinart! Stack the slices into a 1 qt. glass canning jar. In a medium saucepan, bring 1 c. white vinegar, 1 T. mixed pickling spice, 2 t. sugar, 1 1/2 t. course salt and 1 1/4 c. water to a boil. Stir until sugar and salt dissolve. Pour the liquid over the onions, pressing them to submerge. Let stand, uncovered, for 3 hours. Once cooled, you can refrigerate them, covered, for up to one month. Use them on sandwiches, salads, burgers, etc. They are not only delicious, but beautiful, too!