Try This Summertime Combination

Ah, summertime! Among the many pleasures of the summer months is the arrival of peaches, which are just now making their debut from South Carolina. Local peaches will arrive in late July.

One of my favorite ways to enjoy fresh peaches is to grill them and then serve them with vanilla ice cream and basil syrup. Yes, basil syrup. The flavors of sweet summer herbs like basil, lemon balm, lemon verbena, mint and lavender pair beautifully with summer stone fruits.

To flavor a syrup with any fresh herb, collect a packed cup of the leaves of your herb of choice. Combine one cup of water and one cup of sugar with a pinch of salt in a saucepan. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Boil for one minute. Remove from the heat and allow to sit one minute. Stir in the herb leaves. Allow the syrup and leaves to cool to room temperature, then puree in a blender. Strain the syrup through a fine sieve and store it covered in the refrigerator.

That's all there is to it. Serve your herb syrup with any fresh fruit or a combination.

Cucumber Buttermilk Soup

I created this recipe because I had run out of ideas for the abundant harvest of cucumbers we currently enjoy. It is based on a classic cream of cucumber soup, but with far less fat. The acid tang of the buttermilk is enhanced by a touch of cider vinegar. Country flavors come together to re-imagine a classic!

Cucumber Buttermilk Soup

Makes 2 servings, easily multiplied

1 teaspoon canola oil
3 medium cucumbers, seeded and diced, about 2 cups
1/3 cup diced Vidalia onion, or other sweet onion
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup buttermilk, or more, if needed
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill leaves
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
dash of hot sauce
Salt and pepper

In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over medium-low heat. Add the onion, cover, turn the heat to low, and cook gently until the onion is translucent. Uncover, add the cucumbers, and cook, stirring once or twice, for a minute or two. Add the chicken broth and the garlic powder, increase the heat, and simmer the soup, covered, for 5 minutes. Transfer the soup to a blender jar and allow to cool for 15-20 minutes. Add the buttermilk, cold from the refrigerator, to the blender, along with the dill. Puree the soup. If you wish, strain the soup. Transfer the soup to a metal bowl, add the vinegar and hot sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. Place the bowl in the refrigerator to chill.

Before serving the soup, taste and correct the seasoning. Garnish with diced cucumber, some dill leaves and/or freshly picked cucumber flowers.

Variations: Use another herb  instead of the dill. Try a different type of vinegar or lemon juice for a flavor change.

Food Gifts for the Holidays

'Tis the season once again. During the holidays, my thoughts typically turn to things I can make in the kitchen to share with friends and family. Here are some ideas that go beyond the usual cookies and other baked goods. Make no mistake, we love cookies and other sweets. These suggestions are intended to broaden the scope of your food-themed gift giving.

Jams, Jellies, Conserves and Preserves
Almost as popular as baked goods, canned fruit spreads and preserves make wonderful gifts. Missed the chance for perfect berries at the farmer's market last summer? No worries. Make pomegranate jelly with bottled juice, sugar and powdered fruit pectin. Use in-season citrus fruit to prepare citrus curd, then process it in small jars for giving. You can find recipes for many such items with a quick Google search.

Pickles
Another category of preserved foods that we don't often consider, pickles can be made from just about any vegetable that will not become mushy due to the heat of processing. If you did not make pickles last summer, consider using vegetables that are in season now, such as winter squash, carrots, and beets. If you can a batch in the next week or two, they will be ready to eat by New Year's Eve.

Dry Products
One of my favorite gifts to give when I was just learning to cook was a bean soup mix. Go to the nearest store with a bulk section and purchase small amounts of 2 or 3 legumes and one grain, such as barley or wild rice. Also buy some dehydrated onions and garlic, bay leaves, and sun-dried tomatoes. You can get creative with additional flavorings. Dried thyme, oregano, marjoram or basil, along with dehydrated vegetables such as carrots, can also be included. Use your imagination. Purchase decorative jars for your gifts, or use canning jars from the grocery store. Combine these ingredients in whatever amounts suit you, and then fill small jars with the mixture. Tip: Don't overdo it on the grain, or the soup may become too thick. A tablespoon of dry wild rice is plenty for a half pint of soup mix. Because the components are dehydrated, a half-pint of the soup mix will make 4 to 6 servings. Be sure to include the instructions: Soak the mixture in the refrigerator overnight in enough water to cover by one inch. The next day bring slowly to a boil, adjust the heat and simmer about an hour and a half, or until the largest beans are tender. Serve with crusty bread for a warming supper.

If you grow and dry your own herbs, make teas or seasoning mixes for gifting. Herbal product recipes abound.

Tinctures
Make homemade vanilla extract with purchased vanilla beans, vodka, and decorative bottles. You can find recipes for this and other tinctures online. Kick up the flavor with Tennessee whiskey or another liquor instead of vodka. Whatever you select, be sure it is 90 proof or above, for maximum preservative effect.

And one more idea...
Visit your favorite food purveyors. Look for products you'd love to try, but haven't yet. Buy two of everything. Make a gift basket for a special friend with one of each of the products. Keep the other as a holiday gift to yourself.

Indoor Growing and a Word About Potatoes

If you cannot wait for spring, why not try growing a few veggies and herbs indoors this winter? A sunny windowsill or some artificial light will allow you not only to satisfy your gardening urge, but also to provide some welcome, out-of-season freshness in the kitchen.

If you have a south-facing window, you should be able to grow shade-tolerant greens and herbs. Some good ones to try are chervil, cilantro, and chives, all of which will grow without full sun. (In winter in Tennessee, a south-facing window is not nearly as bright as full summer sun.) With the addition of light, you can branch out into more demanding crops, like arugula, lettuce and corn salad.

I currently have an LED unit capable of illuminating about four square feet of growing space. We have lettuce, arugula, chives, chervil, cilantro, parsley and bak choy all growing well. LED lighting produces a lot of illumination for very little electricity. This unit, which is a prototype obtained from the manufacturer, consumes only 15 watts.

In two months, it will be time to plant potatoes. I mention this now, because you should now be ordering your seed potatoes online, if you want something other than the standard offerings we see around here. In my experience, Kennebec is the most common seed potato in the garden centers, with Red Pontiac being a close second. While I have seen heirlooms, most notably Irish Cobbler, available in recent years, they are not common. Another one you can often find is Yukon Gold, which is not only a great all-purpose potato but a good keeper, something important for home gardeners.

Contrary to popular belief, you can plant potatoes from the grocery store and they will grow. However, using them is not a good idea, as you may bring potato viruses, of which there are several, into your garden, making it difficult thereafter to produce potatoes. Play it safe and purchase certified virus free seed potatoes from a garden center or catalog.

Time for Early Plantings

Although the frigid temperatures outside may not be encouraging, now is the time to plant some slow growing crops for spring transplants. Leeks, celery, celery root and seed onions should all be started indoors by mid-January, in order to have plants ready for moving into the garden by the first week of March.

Gardeners with a coldframe should also think about starting lettuce and spinach indoors for moving to the coldframe in about a month. Other good early crop choices for coldframe production are corn salad, mizuna, bak choy, scallions, and mustards.

Free-standing coldframe

I have been experimenting with artificial light gardening for a number of years, and this season I am using an LED lighting system originally designed for aquarium illumination. While it is not ideal for plant production, it is certainly a far cry from the fluorescent shop lights I once used. The LED unit is compact, runs cool, uses only 15 watts of electricity and is producing a fine crop of microgreens and herbs for the kitchen.

If you are thinking about growing windowsill herbs this winter, start with chives, chervil and cilantro. They all grow easily from seed, do not mind crowding in the pot, and develop flavor at a young age. They all also tolerate light shade, and so will grow in a sunny window or under artificial lights more readily than more sun-loving crops. Cilantro microgreens only a couple of inches tall will brighten up your Latino or Asian dishes during the gloomy months. Chervil is almost too pretty to eat, but it adds a note of tarragon and parsley combined. Use it on vegetable or fish dishes, in particular. Chives can be used to bring a hint of onion flavor wherever you need it. If you start a few pots now and have some plants left over, you can transplant them to outdoor beds around the first of March, and they should grow and produce more herbs before the weather heats up. Chives is perennial, and clumps started from seed this spring may bloom next fall. They will certainly bloom when they are in their second season outside, especially if placed in full sun. Chervil will go to seed in May or June, as soon as the weather warms. Gather the needle-like seeds for a fall planting, and compost the rest of the plant. Chervil does not germinate well, so be sure to save a lot of seeds.

Late Spring Harvest

June is a great time in the food garden. We have potatoes, peas, and tarragon in abundance, so all we need is a protein, and dinner is done. Parsley and mint are both thriving right now, too, as the oregano prepares to bloom and its flavor becomes harsh and unpleasant. We have also permitted ourselves to pluck a few sprigs of basil, although the plants remain small. Fresh basil is just too good to resist. Although we have been pulling a few for the kitchen, our sweet red onions are not yet ready to harvest. Some of them are already as large as softballs. We have plenty of green onions from our late March planting of Evergreen White Bunching seeds from Mayo Seed Company, Knoxville.

Straw Bale Update
All the bales are planted, and everything looks really good. We had a couple of bales that collapsed, but the plants in them are still looking healthy. It is too early to tell about harvest amounts or quality, but so far the plants in the bales are behaving much like plants elsewhere in the garden. We will have more to say on straw bale gardening as summer progresses.

Elsewhere in the Garden
From the appearance of our Lazy Wife Greasy beans, we will soon be canning them to enjoy later in the year. The vigorous vines are hanging full of beautiful beans. Greasy beans are Southern heirlooms that lack hairs on the pods, giving them an oiled appearance. The "lazy wife" part of the name is because the beans are stringless. They can be cooked whole or simply broken in pieces without stringing, a boon to any lazy wife (or husband) who finds stringing beans a chore.

The Tromboncino summer squash vines threaten the entire neighborhood, they are so vigorous! This is the only summer squash cultivar that is ignored by squash vine borers, a pest that in some areas makes squash production nearly impossible without extraordinary measures to prevent the insects's gaining access to the plants. We have ours confined to a trellis, but this is not really a plant for a small space garden.

We grew Irish Cobbler potatoes this year, and despite them being attacked repeatedly by flea beetles, we are going to have a decent harvest. This old fashioned cultivar, said to have been developed in New England in the Nineteenth Century by Irish immigrants, bears both red and white tubers on the same plant. The potatoes have rather deep eyes, making them a little trouble to peel. However, this is their only drawback. The flavor is superb, and they are good keepers. They also have the perfect texture for potato salad, a required side dish at every summer barbecue and picnic. At the end of this post I have included a recipe for Southern Style Potato Salad. Mine is based on a recipe from the restaurant at the Soul Food Museum in Atlanta. I have changed a few things to reflect the way potato salad was made in my family. It is important for the eggs and vegetables to be chopped into dice about 1/4 inch or a little smaller. This must be done by hand. Using a food processor will produce a mushy texture.

Southern Style Potato Salad

1 pound Irish Cobbler potatoes

3 eggs

2 tablespoons yellow mustard

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup finely diced onion

1/2 cup finely diced celery

1/2 cup finely diced sweet pickles (not sweet pickle relish)

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon finely minced fresh parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

Cook potatoes until they offer only slight resistance when pierced with the point of a knife. Drain in a colander, and when cool enough to handle peel and cut them into small dice. Reserve the potatoes in a large bowl.

Place the eggs in a saucepan and add cold water to cover them by one inch. Bring slowly to a boil, remove from the heat, cover the pan, and let stand 20 minutes. Drain, fill the pan with cold water, and let stand until the eggs are cool. This may require two changes of cold water. Peel the eggs, and cut them into small dice like the potatoes. Add to the bowl with the reserved potatoes. Stir gently to combine.

To the bowl add the mustard, vinegar, sugar, mayonnaise, onion, celery and sweet pickle. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add more mustard and/or mayonnaise, if desired, for a creamier salad. Chill overnight to blend the flavors. Garnish with paprika and parsley just before serving.

Thai Curry With Fall Produce

With the arrival of frost, we have harvested both lemongrass and ginger, and we have an abundance of each. At the same time, we have cool season green crops such as arugula and parsley, so I went in search of recipes that might encompass these products. I discovered the perfect recipe in a Thai cookbook I own. It is "Jungle Curry," an example of Thai "country cooking" than can be varied endlessly.

Ginger flowers in the fall garden

You may have seen the little cans of Thai curry paste in Asian markets. The basic ones are green, yellow and red. All of them are made by grinding different combinations of herbs and vegetables together, creating a complex flavor that surpasses the individual notes of which it is composed. Because the basic varieties of curry are somewhat "standard" in Thai cooking, many people rely on canned products. The result has been that the art of making curry by hand is becoming unfamiliar.

"Curry" simply means "mixture" or "blend." Thai curries and those of other southeast Asian countries differ from the spice mixture people often associate with Indian curry. Southeast Asian curries rely more on fresh ingredients and are therefore often wet pastes, rather than a dry powder. In this regard, they resemble the Middle Eastern condiment, harissa.

Jungle curry involves combining ingredients often found in other curry mixtures, chili peppers, lemongrass, ginger and cilantro, with herbs and greens more often seen in European than in Asian dishes. Traditionally, rural people would gather plants from the surrounding forest and incorporate these into their curries. Because the recipe varied depending upon what was available from Nature, these dishes can incorporate whatever ingredients you may have on hand.

Thai Jungle Curry with Grilled Beef and Vegetables
2 large servings

Curry paste:
1 large lemongrass stalk, trimmed and the lower 3 inches chopped coarsely
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
3 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger
1 anchovy filet, oil packed, drained
1/3 cup chopped onions
5 green Serrano chilies, stemmed and chopped
3 red Thai chilies, or cayenne peppers, stemmed and chopped
1/2 cup fresh arugula leaves, torn
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, torn
1/4 cup chopped chives
2 tablespoons fresh tarragon leaves, chopped

Grilled beef and vegetables:
1/2 pound flank or breakfast steak, thinly sliced across the grain
2 tablespoons soy sauce
black pepper, freshly ground
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
the zest from one lime
1 leek, trimmed and chopped
2 cups mixed vegetables in uniform pieces, such as broccoli florets, mushroom caps, cubes of squash, sliced carrots, baby corn, water chestnuts, etc.
3 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
1 cup beef stock, fresh or canned
1/2 cup fresh arugula leaves
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup chopped chives
2 tablespoons fresh tarragon leaves
steamed jasmine rice, to serve

Make the curry paste in a large, heavy mortar, or use a food processor. The mortar will produce a more traditional curry, while the food processor will produce a smoother one. Combine the ingredients and pound or process until crushed and blended. Scrape down the work bowl of the processor several times, if using one. Transfer the curry to a small bowl and refrigerate until ready to use. The curry will keep a week in the refrigerator, or a month in the freezer. You can double the batch easily if you prefer to freeze the extra.

To complete the dish, place the sliced beef in a small bowl with the soy sauce and a generous amount of black pepper. Marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes. Prepare a charcoal grill, or heat a grill pan over high heat for about 10 minutes. Grill the beef slices until they are just marked but still slightly pink, about a minute per side. Discard the marinade. Set the beef aside on a plate.

Heat a wok or heavy skillet and add the oil. When it ripples, add the garlic and stir fry until it is pale golden. Add the lime zest and the curry paste and stir fry 30 seconds. Add the leek and the vegetables, and stir fry until they are crisp-tender. Add the sugar and the fish sauce, and stir fry until most of the liquid has evaporated. Add the beef stock, lower the heat, and bring to a simmer. Add the reserved beef slices and the fresh herbs and greens. Simmer just until the herbs wilt. Serve hot over jasmine rice.

Grilled tofu can be substituted for the beef, in which case use vegetable stock. If you prefer a vegan dish, leave out the anchovy and fish sauce, substituting soy sauce, about a tablespoon for the anchovy and 3 tablespoons for the fish sauce. Similarly, you could use shrimp and seafood stock, or grilled chicken and chicken stock. Parsley, oregano, spinach, corn salad, or other greens and herbs can be substituted for those given in the recipe. Just make sure to use sufficient amounts to create a bold flavor.

Cool Down Boosts Veggie Production

The cooler weather and half an inch of rain have conspired to give the late summer garden a boost in productivity. Suddenly, the okra plants are producing two or three pods at a time, rather than doling them out one by one. Beans that we were ready to pull up and compost have caught their second wind. I froze several pints last week, and am going out this morning to harvest more.

Likewise, the peppers are flush with blooms and new green fruits. Because they are growing on one of our walk-in coldframes this year, the peppers should continue to bear until Thanksgiving. If the ground remains warm, even a light frost should not stop their production.

If you don't have a coldframe, you can nevertheless extend the pepper season by at least a couple of weeks. When frost is predicted, uproot the plants, shake off most of the soil and place the roots in a bucket of water. Set the plant in a protected spot, such as a garage, and the fruits should continue to ripen normally for a while longer.

Bak choy, lettuce, mache, cilantro, scallions, chervil, spinach and radishes that I have planted in the last few weeks are all up and going strong. I intend to transplant bak choy this afternoon. The others will take a bit longer to get large enough. The radishes will stay in their container until they mature. I have finally learned to thin radishes as soon as they are about an inch tall, keeping them about two inches apart. When they are the size of a marble, pull every other one for salad, and let the remaining ones mature to golf-ball size.

Jerusalem artichokes are blooming along the roadside near our house. The plant is Helianthus tuberosus, a North American native that has been used as food for centuries. They are exceptionally easy to grow, to the point that they can become invasive if not restrained. A large raised bed is best, because the plants are confined. If you plant them where they can spread freely, be sure to harvest every single tuber each fall, or they can become hard to control. Also, cut the flowers before seeds form. Otherwise, self-sown seedlings can pop up all over the garden. They make beautiful cut flowers. The tubers can be prepared in a variety of ways, much like potatoes.

Dill stars in the herb garden at this time of year, with its bright yellow flowers that attract butterflies, and the savory leaves for potato salad and fish dishes. Basil plants can start to look worn out if you have harvested them regularly. It is time to consider removing them to make way for parsley, chervil and cilantro. Preserve the flavor of fresh basil by making pesto, basil butter, or flavored oil. Recipes for all these abound on the Internet. Mint is at its best at this time of year. Harvest the smaller leaves for the best flavor. Mint can be preserved as syrup. Make a simple syrup consisting of two parts water and one part sugar. Bring to a simmer, dissolving all the sugar, and remove from the heat. Add an ounce or two of mint leaves, crushed, to the warm syrup. Allow to cool overnight, then strain. Freeze the syrup in ice cube trays, then store the cubes in a zipper bag in the freezer. Use them to add summer flavor to winter fruit dishes, and to drizzle over ice cream or cake.

Thanksgiving Harvest

We hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving Day with family and friends, as did we. It is always a pleasure to use homegrown ingredients in the kitchen, and the traditional Thanksgiving feast is no exception.  We had cabbage, carrots, sage, parsley, thyme, scallions and lettuce from the garden. I purchased sweet potatoes at the Farmer’s Market a month or so ago, and kept them in storage. For the remaining ingredients, turkey, cranberries, and so forth, we sought out local, regional, or organic products to the extent possible. As a result, I think we had one of the tastiest, most wholesome Thanksgiving dinners in recent memory, one to be thankful for, in fact.

WINTER CROPS ENHANCE MARKET MEALS

Although the harvest in the coming months is likely to be rather small, a touch of homegrown here and there can take a meal from routine to special. Our number one cold weather gardening project is growing herbs. Fortunately, our climate is sufficiently mild that French thyme, Greek oregano, chives, sage and rosemary are perennial. Freshly cut herbs really perk up dishes made with canned, frozen or imported produce, and growing them saves a fortune. Typically, a little bunch of herbs at the grocery costs about $2.00, and the amount is usually more than I need for a couple of meals. So the herbs sometimes languish in the fridge and eventually wind up in the compost bin. Not so with homegrown herbs.

Three members of the carrot family, parsley, cilantro, and chervil, all grow well through the winter here. To be sure of a continuous supply, however, it is best to give them a bit of protection. I have a pot of chervil in the greenhouse, just in case something unfortunate happens to the ones growing out in the garden.  Parsley can be potted up and brought indoors for the winter, or you can start a few plants in late summer for the purpose. Outdoors, parsley grows and produces on all but the coldest days. If you grow in a coldframe, cilantro seeds can be started in succession all winter long. They grow slowly but will yield enough to garnish your favorite Asian and Latino creations.

Another herb that tolerates cold well is dill. However, you must time seed sowing so the plants will be a couple of feet tall before frost arrives. This can be tricky, since the seeds take a long time to germinate. My last sowing is only about six inches tall now, and refuses to grow taller. I suspect I will have a bumper crop of dill in the spring, but during cold weather I will have to be content with a few sprigs here and there.

Cabbage and carrots have been our best fall crops. We enjoyed coleslaw made from freshly picked ‘Savoy Perfection’ cabbage for Thanksgiving. This cultivar is recommended for fall sowing, and tolerates cold well, as do most plants with "savoyed" leaves. More heads of this and ‘Early Flat Dutch’ await harvest in the greenhouses. Carrots in outdoor beds remain crisp and delicious all winter, and we pull them as needed.

Spinach that we planted in September is now ready for picking, and this year’s crop is among our better efforts. We sow the seed heavily, then thin for baby spinach when the plants are four inches tall. When they reach six inches, we pick entire plants and leave others to grow throughout the winter.  By leaving larger plants with space between, we can extend the harvest until next February.

GRAFTED TOMATOES AT STANLEY'S NEXT YEAR

Our favorite local garden center, Stanley’s Greenhouse, is planning to offer grafted tomatoes next season. We can’t wait to try this new concept. Grafted tomatoes have been used for commercial production for years, but recently growers have begun grafting them for the home gardener. The idea is simple. An heirloom plant with desirable fruit characteristics is grafted upon a rootstock with disease and pest resistance. Presto! A plant with heirloom taste and hybrid adaptability. Monte Stanley told me he plans to offer five types, including the popular Cherokee Purple and the scrumptious Brandywine. Thomas Jefferson grew Brandywine tomatoes at Monticello, but they are difficult to grow in the Tennessee Valley because they lack disease resistance. This may be an opportunity for homegrown taste Jefferson would have appreciated.

If you are interested in grafted tomatoes, it might be wise to let them know at Stanley’s, as quantities will necessarily be limited.

 

 

Cold Soups From the Summer Garden

With summer turning up the heat and the garden bursting with produce and herbs, why not try some cold soup recipes? I thought soup came out of a red and white can until I went to college. It was on a trip to Atlanta, sometime in the early 70s, that I learned to enjoy the most famous cold soup, gazpacho. I have been making it and other cold soups ever since.

Gazpacho has ancient roots. It began as a way to use stale bread, which, when combined with garlic, salt, olive oil and water, could be converted into a stiff paste that would keep a long time. Columbus packed a few barrels of this mixture on his voyages of discovery, for example. The Romans may have added vinegar to the mixture, which probably originated among the wheat-eating cultures of the Middle East during the earliest days of agriculture, roughly 10,000 years ago. The cucumber, cultivated for at least 3000 years and introduced to Europe by the Greeks or Romans from its native India, became an ingredient at some point, and when Spanish explorers brought back tomatoes and peppers from the New World, these found their way into gazpacho, as well. The "classic" version of gazpacho with tomatoes is generally associated with Andalusia, southern Spain, which includes Gibraltar, the gateway to the Mediterranean. Today, however, gazpacho turns up on restaurant menus with all sorts of non-traditional ingredients, from apples to grilled shrimp. There is even a version that is served hot.

One of my gardening goals is to have all the fresh ingredients needed for gazpacho available in the garden by August. Here is my recipe for a classic-style gazpacho. Keep in mind that all amounts are approximate. The soup will be delicious as long as you maintain the ingredients in roughly the same ratios. The quality of the bread matters. If you don't have some leftovers of really good bread, leave out the crumbs altogether.

Gazpacho is a great way to use all those cherry tomatoes!

Gazpacho Andaluz

Ingredients:

2 medium tomatoes, chopped

1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped

1 bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1 medium red onion, chopped

3 tablespoons breadcrumbs, from stale country-style bread

1 clove garlic, minced

Juice of 1 lemon

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

A handful of mixed fresh herbs (parsley, basil, chives, tarragon, chervil) minced

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon sweet Hungarian paprika

3 cups water, tomato juice, chicken stock or vegetable stock

Sour cream

Minced red or yellow bell peppers

Chopped scallions

You can use a food processor to chop the vegetables, but the texture will not be as good as if they are chopped by hand. Combine the chopped vegetables, breadcrumbs, garlic, lemon juice, olice oil, herbs, salt and paprika in a large bowl. Cover the mixture, and place it in the refrigerator to chill. Separately chill the 3 cups of liquid. These components can be held in the refrigerator overnight, if desired.

When ready to serve, combine the vegetable mix with the chilled liquid.   Stir well and serve topped with sour cream, minced peppers and chopped scallions.

This recipe is a variation on traditional gazpacho, in terms of both ingredients and technique. You can find an authentic Andalusian recipe here.

Here's another cold soup, a refreshing starter for a late meal on a hot night.

Uncooked Cold Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

2 cucumbers, peeled and seeded

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup sour cream

1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 teaspoons sherry vinegar, or to taste

1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

In a food processor or by hand, finely chop the cucumbers. Pieces should be 1/4 inch or less in diameter. Combine the chopped cucumber with the other ingredients in a large bowl and chill until very cold. Serve garnished with additional fresh dill, if desired.

Let's conclude with one more cold soup recipe. This one is for gazpacho's cousin, ajoblanco, made with almonds. Although like gazpacho its exact origins are unknown, ajoblanco is thought to have appeared first in Seville. Certainly the almonds, which are native to the Middle East, arrived in Spain with the Moors. Use a kitchen scale to accurately measure the dry ingredients.

Ajoblanco de Granada

Ingredients

3 1/2 ounces raw almonds, blanched and skins removed

1/2 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 ounces breadcrumbs, from stale country-style bread 

2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup less 1 tablespoon Spanish olive oil
1 to 2 teaspoons Sherry vinegar
About 1 quart chilled water
Anchovies
Baked potatoes
Butter
Chopped parsley

Grind the blanched almonds with the salt in a food processor until you have a coarse meal. Add the breadcrumbs, garlic, olive oil and vinegar and process to a smooth paste. With the motor running, slowly add the water until the soup is the consistency of heavy cream. Chill until very cold.

Serve the soup in chilled bowls, garnished with an anchovy or two. Buttered baked potatoes garnished with parsley are a traditional accompaniment.