Yellow Tomato Gazpacho

If you're one of the lucky few who's got an abundance of tomatoes coming from your garden, you may consider making gazpacho - a chilled Spanish tomato soup.  I found this on a quick search after coming upon 3 delicious, overripe yellow tomatoes, which I found slightly less bitter than red tomatoes.  However, I later made this recipe exactly the same way with normal tomatoes, and it came out just fine.  I have since made this dish a number of times with yellow tomatoes, which seem to have slightly less acidic flavor, and which really make for an impressive dish.

This dish travels incredibly well - I have served it out of a tupperware pitcher into disposable cups at least twice in my life, most notably when I was about ten, but more recently a couple of weeks ago.  It confused everyone the first time, but both times it was delicious.

Yellow Tomato Gazpacho
From Food & Wine, submitted by Suzanne Goin

• 2 1/2 pounds ripe yellow tomatoes
• 3 Persian cucumbers, 2 kirby, or 1 hothouse
• 1/2 jalapeño, seeded and cut in half
• 4 cilantro sprigs, plus 12 cilantro leaves
• 2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tablespoons diced red or orange sweet pepper
• 3 tablespoons diced red onion
• 18 small cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• Super-good extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling

Prep the tomatoes by cutting an x at the stem, then blanching in boiling water for 60 seconds. Immediately transfer to an ice water bath for a few minutes, then peel off the skins.  Remove the cores and coarsely chop the tomatoes, saving all of the juice.  Reserve the ice water.

Before peeling

After peeling

Seed and dice 3 tablespoons of unpeeled cucumber, as uniformly as you can manage, for the garnish.  Peel and coarsely chop the remaining cucumbers.

Place half of the yellow tomatoes, the coarsely chopped cucumber, jalapeño, cilantro sprigs, garlic, vinegar, and olive oil in a blender with 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt and some pepper. Process at the lowest speed until broken down. Turn the speed up to high and puree until the soup is completely smooth. If the soup is too thick, add a little of the reserved ice water. Strain the soup through a fine-mesh sieve (I recently upgraded from the strainer shown below to a food mill, which saved me about 20 minutes of stress), pressing out as much liquid as possible. Taste for seasoning. Repeat with the rest of the soup ingredients. Chill the soup in the refrigerator until it's very cold.

Definitely strain this, and make sure to work on the pulp with a spoon or a food mill to push all but the seeds through.  It won't strain easily, FYI

Toss the diced sweet pepper, onion and cucumber together in a small bowl. Pour the gazpacho into 6 chilled soup bowls and scatter the pepper mixture over the soup. Season the cherry tomatoes with salt and pepper and place 6 cherry tomato halves and 2 cilantro leaves at the center of each bowl. Finish each soup with a drizzle of super-good olive oil. To serve family-style, place the soup in a chilled tureen or pitcher and garnish with the cherry tomato halves and cilantro; pass the diced vegetables on the side.