Gorgeous Gazpacho

The subject of chilled soups can divide friends and families in the UK. I have heard raised voices on the subject – the usual theme of the argument is that British soup should be served hot. Cold soup is for foreigners.

Given that the temperature of the UK is generally low and the air damp, hot soups would appear to be a more sensible option. However, this summer has seen unusually high temperatures and a complete absence of rain – making hot soups seem peculiar in blazing, arid heat. Instead, Brits should guzzle a bowl of gorgeous Gazpacho -a sort of chilled, liquefied, summer salad – given texture by bread and enriched and brightened with delicious olive oil and sharp sherry vinegar.

As the name suggests, this is a “foreign” soup -originally from Andalusia in Spain. I have seen variations in recipes -some avoid onions altogether, some leave out the cucumber.  Once Gazpacho travels abroad, people do all sorts of awful things to it -adding almonds, olives, cumin seeds – missing the point of the dish entirely. This rustic soup was intended as a way of using up stale bread and making plentiful summer vegetables go further -it was never meant to be a luxurious recipe.

However -a good gazpacho won’t be that economical to make in the UK. In Spain, tomatoes are packed with flavour and are cheap; olive oil is not considered a “fancy” item.  In the UK you have to make bank to get a decent tomato with any sort of flavour and olive oil is a middle class opportunity for one-upmanship – not a peasant staple. So embrace your inner bourgeois:  shell out for some really pricey extra virgin olive oil, then buy tomatoes with fancy names and a good pedigree.

I personally cannot bear hot tomato soup -it reminds me of vile school dinners -that sweet, cloying scent filling the corridors as we queued at lunchtime;  the lurid orange liquid with a texture like milk, served in a plastic beaker along with a stale white roll.  Even the fanciest interpretations of tomato soup still fail to please me when hot -almost certainly a result of the trauma of disgusting school food. And yet, Gazpacho fills me with joy, both for its strange, slightly gritty texture and  its happy summery flavours. I guess that makes me foreign, then…

 

 

Gorgeous Gazpacho

500g of the smallest, most delicious  tomatoes you can get your hands on. The words “cherry” and “vine”  (preferably together) are your best bet for finding flavourful tomatoes in a UK supermarket. If you grow your own, then that is even better.

1/2 cucumber

1/2 green pepper

1/2 red pepper

2 spring onions

1 or 2 cloves garlic (I would go 2 every time)

The best olive oil you have

1 slice bread (ideally something white and rustic -not sourdough)

2 tbsps. sherry vinegar

 

Halve the tomatoes, remove and discard the seeds. Roughly chop the cucumber, deseed and chop the peppers., chop the spring onions and peel the garlic

Place all the vegetables and bread into a blender along with 2 tbsps. very good olive oil and 1 tbsp. sherry vinegar. Blitz until smooth. Taste and season with sea salt, then add more vinegar until you get a good balance of acidity. If the mixture is too thick, add a little water  (a tablespoon at a time). Add more olive oil to give richness. It won’t look like a bloody Mary, rather it will be fairly pink in colour -which is perfectly OK.

Chill the soup in the fridge -do not be tempted to add ice cubes as they dilute the flavour. I strongly disapprove of any garnishes on gazpacho -I have seen hideous recipes where the soup is hidden under what looks like an August compost heap of quartered tomatoes and onions and mint leaves, or great big slices of toasted bread and whole black olives. Leave it off –  simply pour the soup into bowls and add a final swirl of delicious olive oil.

Beautiful British Babies

The past few days have been eventful here in Blighty. We have had a General Election, which was predictably awful, with lots of politicians and activists shouting at each other about their beliefs, and we have had a far more joyful event -the arrival of a Royal Baby.

While the United Kingdom welcomes this baby into its Royal family, at the same time of year the plant kingdom hears the patter of tiny roots .The balance of plant power shifts from the elderly titans of winter, those mighty root and tuber vegetables, to the youthful, fresh leaves and fruits of summer. As a winter-hater, the sight of baby spinach, tender asparagus spears and delicious smelling miniature plum tomatoes at the market fills me with joy. I think of cricket matches, outdoor concerts, the flat racing season and other wonderfully British summer pursuits. In the kitchen I start to think about picnics -and in honour of our new Princess, decided to make another British favourite -the quiche.

All too often a dustbin for peculiar odds and ends one finds in the fridge, my quiche recipe is very different – the ingredients are royally expensive -but worth it. A very light custard, made dairy-free by using almond milk instead of double cream, forms a gently wobbling blanket enveloping soft and mild-tasting spinach leaves, miniature leeks braised in good olive oil with tomatoes, some blanched asparagus spears and sweetly-sharp early  tomatoes. The filling is gently seasoned with lemon juice and the slightest touch of sea salt, and the pretty red and green vegetables make it more exciting to look at than an anaemic Quiche Lorraine, with its fatty, fleshy lumps of bacon and pallid onion slivers.

I was sceptical about using almond milk to begin with, worried that the texture of the quiche would be too runny and watery, but the custard held its shape perfectly. I am a real convert to this dairy substitute with its light flavour and pleasant off white colour (not keen on yellowy or more grey ‘milk’ like soy).  I was so impressed, that I have decided to post two more almond milk recipes -one for a soup and one for a cake. If you do buy a large carton of almond milk, then none should go to waste.

British Baby Quiche

! packet ready rolled dairy-free shortcrust pastry (or make your own)

3 eggs

Almond milk

75g baby spinach, washed and wilted

12 miniature plum tomatoes on the vine (ludicrously expensive per kilo, but worth every penny)

200g baby leeks cleaned and chopped

1 pack baby asparagus spears, blanched

lemon juice

olive oil

sea salt

Best enjoyed warm shortly after coming out of the oven, this quiche also keeps well and is delicious either cold or reheated. I made mine a square shape, to cut into rectangles, as they pack better into a lunchbox/Tupperware container, than slices cut from a circle. However -bake the quiche in whatever you like – 9″ diameter circular tin or a 9″x 9″ square.

Grease and line the baking tin with parchment, then roll out the pastry and cut it to fit. Prick the base of the pastry with a fork, cover with another piece of greaseproof paper, weighed down with baking beans. Place into a preheated oven (180C) and bake for about 15 minutes, checking the base until it has become firm but not brown.

Meanwhile, place a decent slug of olive oil into a saucepan over a low heat and braise the leeks. Take six of the tomatoes and quarter them lengthways. Add them to the leeks after about five minutes, then add a squirt of lemon juice. Keep stirring and cook until the tomatoes start to disintegrate and the leeks soften, but still retain a bit of a ‘squeak’.

Keep the leek and tomatoes in the pan until the pastry has finished blind baking. When you are about to remove the pastry case from the oven, reheat the mixture until it is sizzling.  Take the pastry case out of the oven, remove the beans and parchment, then immediately pour the sizzling leek and tomato mixture into the case. This will help to seal the bottom and to stop the pastry from going soggy.

Now  place the asparagus spears neatly and evenly across the surface of the leek and tomatoes. Then, dot small clumps of baby spinach into any spaces.  Take the remaining tomatoes and slice into rounds. Finally place these in a regular pattern (don’t look at my photo) for a little colour. Sprinkle with a little sea salt and a good squeeze of lemon.

Take a measuring jug and break three eggs into the bottom. .Pour in enough almond milk to bring the volume up to 3/4 pint and whisk well. Add a little salt and pepper, then pour the custard carefully and evenly over the vegetables. Place the quiche on a baking tray, lower the heat of the oven to 160C, cook for about 20 -25 minutes or until the custard is set and a little tanned. Best served warm shortly after removing from the oven, this quiche is also delicious  cold or reheated, and keeps very well.

Confronting Mortality and Tofu

In the biology laboratory at my all girls’ school, there were two different sets of human remains. There was a skeleton called Cyril (who was actually a woman, according to her pelvis) and a small male foetus, floating in a screw-topped jar of formaldehyde. We used to make Cyril-the-skeleton dance and we once made him ‘smoke’ by rolling up a piece of paper as a cigarette, wedging it into a gap left by a missing tooth and then smacking a board rubber behind his skull so the chalk dust blew through his fleshless jawbones in a not-very-convincing cloud. Despite the childish and disrespectful larks we got up to in the classroom while the teacher’s back was turned, I felt slightly uneasy about taking my lessons amongst the dead, and yet was also grateful that we could learn from real human specimens. I do wonder though, if the foetus in a jar is still there. I used to imagine how old he would be if he had lived. I felt sad that he was not at school like us, and instead was in our classroom in his makeshift glass womb.

My experience left me wanting to donate my body to medical science, so I too, one day, could be the Cyril in a classroom, but since I broke my jaw and now have a massive metal plate in it, I think that may not be such a real ambition.

I liked Biology in principle, but the presence of the dead, combined with cutting up lamb lungs, ox eyes and rats was just too much. The whole very animal, physical business of the subject made me queasy. Another element of the subject we were taught, which also left me disgusted, was on farming and ‘new’ foods. I am sure I misunderstood what I was taught terribly –but was convinced for years that with time, we would recycle the solids in sewage and use it to create a new form of human protein. This thought has left me unwilling to eat ‘fake meat’ products and I am still deeply suspicious of processed veggie burgers.

As a vegetarian – I often turn to tofu- that natural, damp, slightly sour, wobbling, pale protein, which seems to absorb flavor and yet destroy it, in one anaemic jiggle. Before I moved to China, I thought tofu was pretty awful, but ate it out of duty and because I was fairly sure it had not already passed through a human. Once I got to China –I changed my opinion, as I tried tofu dishes which were full of flavor, spicy, exciting and the unfortunate texture was masked by other ingredients, or sorted out with a proper fry. One of my favourite and very simple dishes is a combination of tofu and tomato in a gingery, garlicky sauce. It is vegan and low-carb, so a good recipe for people with dietary restrictions. It was the dish which changed my view of tofu – fighting talk, so I hope you enjoy it. And, if you are feeling queasy after my description of biology lessons in the ‘80s, the nausea-healing ginger in the recipe may help to settle your stomach.

Human Biology Tofu

1 thumb of ginger peeled and chopped into splinters

1 tsp dried chilli flakes

1 packet tofu cubed (large as they do break up a bit)

½ packet cherry tomatoes (the ones on a vine are the most delicious –and the baby plum ones are lovely too)

3 cloves garlic chopped finely

1 tbsp groundnut oil

1 tbsp light soy sauce

½ tbsp. mirin OR ½ tbsp. rice wine vinegar mixed with 1 tsp sugar)

Sesame oil

Chives or spring onion greens to finish

Place the groundnut oil into a wok and heat. Fry ginger, chilli flakes and garlic for 30 secs. Add the halved cherry tomatoes (you cut them open so the liquid comes out) and fry for 3 mins in wok at high temperature, until they start to break down. Then add the tofu and heat through. You don’t want to cook it for too long as it begins to break up. Finally mix together the soy sauce with the mirin (or rice wine vinegar with 1 tsp sugar) then add to the wok. Garnish with chives, spring onion greens or a little chopped coriander and a drizzle of sesame oil.