Gazpacho Dorado

In addition to all the regular red tomatoes we've grown in the past, this year we planted an heirloom Ukrainian yellow variety, the seeds of which we picked up at Strawbery Banke last fall. Although they took a while to fruit, they ended up being delicious — meaty, and not as acidic as tomatoes are apt to be. I think of it as a great tomato for people who think they don't like tomatoes. (Although I cannot personally understand such an aversion, I hear that it does indeed exist among some small, sad portion of the population.)

They are also gorgeous:

Most of our red tomatoes get sauced or salsa'd, so I thought I'd use some of the yellow ones for gazpacho to save the red for those other uses. Also involved are an onion, a clove of garlic, a small slicing cucumber, and a small green pepper.

This is a traditional Spanish-type of gazpacho, meaning it is pureed and has bread, and is not a cucumber-y mild salsa (though those are nice, too). Since this one is yellow, I'm calling it ...

Gazpacho Dorado

1 double-thick slice of French bread

2 pounds of yellow tomatoes (that's 1 big and 1 medium), stemmed

1 clove of garlic (I used Spanish Rosa, because, you know, Spain), peeled

1 small yellow onion, peeled

1 small green pepper, stemmed and seeded

1 6-inch cucumber, peeled and seeded)

1/4 tsp. ground cumin

3 Tbs. red wine vinegar (or sherry if you have it)

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1/2-3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1. Submerge the bread in a dish of water and let it soak: 

2. Prep the veggies (see above) and throw them in the food processor.

3. Squeeze all the water out of the bread so it is a dense ball. Throw it into the food processor as well, and add the rest of the ingredients except the olive oil.

4. Puree it all together until very smooth. Then drizzle olive oil into the mix while the blades are still going. I stopped to check a couple times to make sure it wasn't getting too watery. If your tomatoes are more watery than meaty, or if you're on a diet, you can use less oil, but it does add a lot of flavor.

5. Chill in the fridge for several hours, until very cold. Serve with a dollop of sour cream:

It's so pretty! I'll admit, it's kind of a mind-bender to eat something that looks like squash soup and tastes like gazpacho, but has a great flavor. And I think the color looks really nice — the one thing I don't always love about red-tomato gazpacho is how it ends up looking kind of orangey-pink, so this is a good solution to that aesthetic issue.

On the side are zucchini pancakes, this time made much smaller and spiced up with curry powder and garam masala for a change of pace. Delicious hot-weather dinner ... if we ever have hot weather again.