Gazpacho Summer Soup

Gazpacho Soup served as an appetizer at my son's house last weekend.

Soup that isn't piping hot has never appealed to me.  Call me a soup snob, cause I probably am one.  But I love a challenge in the kitchen so what the heck!  A few weeks ago I was watching Ree Drummond on Food Network, and she made Gazpacho and it peaked my interest.  Produce is so beautiful right now, and Smiley's Farmers Market is right down the road so I decided to brave it!

Here is a link to Ree's recipe, but if you know anything about me, you know I'm not going to follow it but use it as a blue print and do it my way.  I made her recipe the first time and honestly, I didn't like it very much.  The cucumber overpowered the whole dish and kinda made it too rich for me.  I love cucumbers but they don't love me much.  I can have them pickled but if I eat them raw they "come back on me" for days.... but I've figured out the deal with that!!!  From one of the members of my group at I Love Low Carb I learned that the "burp" factor comes from the skin, and by golly I think she's right!  So for my recipe, I peel the cuc's.  But totally not necessary if you don't want too.

Anyway, here is how I did it!

Ingredients
3 good sized tomatoes chunked up for the food processor.  (reserve about 1/2 of a tomato and dice)
1/2 onion chunked up (reserve a bit to dice)
2 stalks of celery chunked up (reserve a bit to dice)
1 large Cucumber, peeled and chunked up (and guess what?? yep, reserve some diced)
1 zucchini chunked up (you get the drift yet????)
2 cloves of garlic (or more if you want)
1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
1/4 cup Olive oil or Avocado oil, your choice
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar (or a bit more, adjust to your taste)
2 tablespoons of "sugar" and yes of course, I used Splenda
1 to 2 tablespoons of a good hot sauce (I like Franks but I'm out so I used about a tsp of tabasco) ((franks is better))
dash of salt and pepper to taste
3 to 4 cups of tomato juice or use this recipe for homemade V8 juice (really inexpensive way to make it)  For today's recipe I got lazy and bought V8 juice but don't tell anybody.

Add your veggies and half of the juice to a large food processor, or process the veggies in batches adding a bit of the tomato juice to each batch, and then dump it all in a big bowl to mix it up.

Since I have a large Kitchen Aid, I dumped all the stuff in it except the reserved diced veggies.  I tasted the mix and adjusted the seasoning.  Process it till it's blended up.  The size you want the veggies to be is purely up to you!  And the thickness of the soup depends on how much juice you add to it.  For this batch I used 3 cups (1 1/2 - 12 ounce cans of V8) but I love a thick soup. Once you have it blended up to your liking and seasoned correctly, add the diced veggies.  But this is totally a personal preference.  You can blend all of it up if you don't want the veggie chunks in it.

Now this soup can be served several ways.  In my first picture, I added a slice or 2 of Avocado and some shrimp. (I made this as an appetizer at my son's house over the weekend).  But if you want it as just a "salad" type side, serve it with a grilled protein.  This would be perfect with a steak off the grill. Tonight I'm smoking chickens for lunch the rest of the week, and this will be our side.

Well, that's about it! But as a last note, I think I'm going to mess with the seasonings to change up the variety.  Some fresh basil out of the garden would be a great addition to this.  Maybe leave out the hot sauce and add some italian seasoning too.  Lots of ideas!

Hope you enjoy this!  As always, please let me know if you try this and if you have any suggestions.

Showing you the size of my maters.

I truly suck at pictures, but you get the drift.

Now, if you are like me, I like a chunky soup.  That's why I reserved some of the veggies to dice up and add after you process the veggies....   Here is what I did.  I think it's about a cup and a half to two cups of diced veggies....

Added the paring knife and spoon for perspective.
I also had some onion reserved but took the pic before I added it.