White gazpacho

With all the recent hot weather I made some kind of semi-logical jump and got to thinking about the food we'd eaten in Catalonia years ago. I want to try making aioli, the proper way, with just garlic, salt and olive oil. I also thought about gazpacho - we were buying it in tetra paks and drinking it in the car, out of the carton, while driving our rented Smart car around the Pyrenees. Both the red kind and the white kind - it was the first time I'd come across the white kind, and we were wowed: fresh, almondy, vegetal, liquid goodness. I don't think I have had it since: it is not available out of supermarket fridges round here, last time I checked. But what better way to work on our excess of cucumbers?

Note: this is my version of a white gazpacho, adapted to what I remembered / what I had in the fridge. I think it is fairly adaptable, but I also think this is not exactly authentic.

1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup water
2 large cucumbers, peeled and chopped into big chunks
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and chopped into big chunks
1 clove of garlic, peeled
1 tbsp cider vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
big pinch of sea salt
1/2 cup of slivered, blanched almonds

Put the breadcrumbs in a cup measure, fill up with the water and let soak while you prep the other ingredients. Put the peeled, chopped cucumbers and apple in a blender. Add the other ingredients to the blender, adding the breadcrumb-water mix last. Blend until smooth. Chill thoroughly before eating - and you can add an ice cube per cup or bowl of soup when serving to make sure it is properly cold.


This turned out waaayyy better than I hoped. It is delicious. Perfect combination of sweet, sharp, salty, savoury, tangy, refreshing... Nice and white as well - minor brown flecks from the breadcrumbs but other than that everything was ~white (peeled cucumber and apple, garlic, almonds etc).