It's officially gazpacho season. Here's what you need to know.
Gazpacho, Spain’s famous cold soup (or is it a drink?) is a shapeshifter. Once an emblem of poverty and refresco or soft drink of day laborers, it’s now ubiquitous and mass-produced and advertised in France via hot men.
At its core the classic Andalusian version is a simple recipe: blended tomatoes, green pepper, cucumber, onion, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, bread, salt and vinegar. Naturally, since Spaniards can hardly agree on anything there are onion-only vs. garlic-only camps. And then the fancy chefs who insist on blanching the garlic and onion. Curiously, gazpacho is one of the five dishes the gastronomic elite can agree is truly Spanish. The others being cocido, tortilla, fabada and paella.
The origin of the word gazpacho itself is a bit of a mess, which is fitting as that is what it means colloquially. Some trace it to a Spanish Arabic origin, while philologists Corominas and Pascual connect it to caspicias, from caspa, a common term for “scraps” or “leftovers.”
There’s green gazpacho in Huelva, made with coriander, a herb that miraculously survived the 1492 expulsion of the Moors, along with other "suspect" ingredients. And no gazpacho is not salmorejo. That’s a different dish altogether: denser, oilier, more of a tomato-bread emulsification than a refreshing soup. White gazpachos of which ajo blanco, with garlic and almonds, is deservedly the most popular are also common. Regional and personal variations with lettuce, cumin, mint and many other ingredients dot the country's geography. There are also hot gazpachos gazpachuelo in a hot stew of rabbit or partridge with vegetables, flat bread, bay leaf and pimentón and gazpachuelo in Málaga a seafood and mayonnaise soup called sopa sevillana in Granada.
Despite its current global popularity, gazpacho wasn’t always so cool. For centuries, it was a a warmish bread and vinegar mix until the early 20th century, when what I have christened the gazpacho “señorial” or posh appeared in cookbooks. And I use the word deliberately (of course food writers did not call it that). In Spain’s deeply class-conscious culture, the words señor and señorito (as in arroz del senyoret from Alicante) signal good breeding. This upper-class version came garnished with a dainty brunoise of vegetables and delicate fried bread cubes. I personally don’t love this version and absolutely will not forgive you if you add chopped eggs. It’s also the one usually served to tourists.
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From “majao” to Thermomix
In novelist and food writer Countess Emilia Pardo Bazán’s La Cocina Antigua (1920), making gazpacho took a good twenty minutes with a pestle and mortar. The mise en place ideally required a servant tasked with handling the onions and garlic, as she warned it would be cruel to let the smell of alliums cling between your ruby ring and lace shirt sleeve. Essentially it was made by making a majao, or pounded mix to which water was added.
“There are as many gazpachos as pestle and mortars.” – Countess Emilia Pardo Bazán
The base of gazpacho is similar to pounded sauces/bases, or majados and picadas that are fundamental to Spanish cuisine and remain widely used today. Gazpacho improves immeasurably if left overnight in the fridge.
When the first tomatoes of the season arrived in Granada, my mother’s sister and her husband held an official Gazpacho Day, making massive batches to freeze in their chest freezer. I know it’s not quite the South Korean kimjiang or kimchi making, but that’s the indelible image of gazpacho I carry in my head. My uncle Miguel Ángel was the only man I knew who ventured into the kitchen - an important role model in the very gendered Spain of the 80s and 90s.
Nowadays you can robotically shove all the ingredients (no need for chopping or peeling except the onion and garlic of course) in the Thermomix and have a reasonable drink in 3 minutes. Spain has been mad about the German appliance since the late 70s. If you use a minipimer or hand held blender you will need to chop and then strain the mix (unless you peel the tomatoes). Alternatively you can run to the shops and get a carton of Alvalle who created the first refrigerated bottled gazpacho in 1991.
While Ferran Adrià included an updated recipe in El Sabor del Mediterráneo (1993) in what is one of the most coveted cookbooks of the 20th century, his updated version adds both mayonnaise, whipped cream, blanches the garlic and the onion and purges the cucumber transforming gazpacho into an unrecognizable concoction.
Andalusian Chef Dani García in the early 2000s popularised it with haute miniature versions featuring cherries, beetroot and strawberries that maintained its culinary ethos. While this might have been cutting edge now it’s a Málaga airport staple.
Today, gazpacho is available year-round in supermarkets while the most cocinitas or cocinillas (cooking fans) still make it at home.
Gazpacho Tools
Gazpacho is not without its menaje or tools. Ardent fans of gazpacho and the ones that own fincas or farming estates own one or several gazpacheras, a bowl with matching small ones. The rustic version below was something my Andalusian grandmother hid along (she preferred Duralex bowls) with esparto grass baskets now millennials buy at inflated prices.
Other niche tools are the many variations of pestle and mortar, el pasapurés (mouli), el chino (strainer), and a more modern tool for people who still make gazpacho by hand and use a tomato peeler (essential for gazpacho señorial).
Andalusian Gazpacho Recipe
Serves 4-6
1kg tomato on the vine, peeled if you are fancy and chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled
¼ small onion, chopped
¼ medium green pepper, seeded and chopped or to taste
¼ medium cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 slice of bread
¾ cup extra virgin oil
1 tbsp. sherry vinegar
½ cup ice cubes
Salt to taste (no pepper!)
Soak the bread with a little water.
Put the tomatoes in a blender with the garlic, onion, pepper and cucumber.
Blend until the vegetables are pureed and strain (if you are that way inclined) into a large bowl.
Squeeze the water from the bread and puree it also in the processor.
With the motor running, add the oil to the bread in a thin stream until it is incorporated.
Add the vinegar and salt to taste.
Mix all the ingredients and pass them through the blender with ice cubes. Rest the gazpacho overnight.
Serve gazpacho preferably in a glass with no decorations or in gazpachera.
My recipe for strawberry gazpacho is in the cookbook I co-authored with Mei Chin and Dee Laffan Blasta books Soup.
Amazing article, nothing beats gazpacho on a summers day!
This is an interesting and excellent article !