BVC Eats: Creamy gazpacho

This cold soup goes down well as a first course for hot weather, or with a simple summer meal of cheese, bread, fruit, and wine.

I always use Spanish olive oil because it tastes more like olives. The olive that makes it taste so strong is Manzanilla.

Creamy Gazpacho
serves four to six

3 medium cucumbers, peeled & chopped
2 ribs organic celery, chopped
1 very ripe avocado
2 cloves garlic, smashed
3 pickled round red Italian peppers
3 T olive oil
1 t salt
juice of 1 lime
1/4 c water

4 to 8 oz greek yogurt
2 c parsley
some fresh basil to taste

garnish: yogurt, slivered sun-dried tomatoes, paper-thin carrot coins

Combine top group of ingredients, blend, refrigerate.

Before serving, put 1 cup of soup into blender with the yogurt, parsley, and basil. Whiz until extra smooth. Add to rest of soup, mix well. This soup has some body to it, because of the yogurt and avocado, so servings should be in the 8-oz range.

Garnish with dollops of the remaining yogurt, topped with shreds of sun-dried oil-preserved tomatoes and paper-thin slices of carrot.

Somewhere else I have a recipe for gazpacho that is chunkier, more like a pico de gallo, with more spicy stuff in it, whole chunked up tomatoes, cilantro, stuff like that. Very Mex. I’ll post that soon. This (above) is tamer.