Grilled Summer Vegetable Gazpacho

This grilled summer vegetable gazpacho is loaded with tomatoes, red onions, and zucchini, all grilled before creating this delicious cold soup. It's thickened with a little bit of bread, and flavored with red wine vinegar and garlic, and garnished with parsley.

This grilled summer vegetable gazpacho is wonderful for this time of year when all of your friends who are backyard farmers are trying to unload their extra vegetables. Plus, it's so delicious.

Gazpacho is traditionally a Spanish soup made with raw summer vegetables. The classic version includes tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper, bread, olive oil, vinegar, and water.

This grilled gazpacho takes a few liberties with the concept, in that you grill the vegetables before you process them into a cold summer soup. The grilled vegetables add a depth of flavor, and the charred bits add to the color of the soup.

This gazpacho is from the book, Mark Bittman's Kitchen Matrix: More than 700 Simple Recipes and Techniques to Mix and Match for Endless Possibilities. Three of us are spending a year cooking our way through the book. After the recipe, be sure to check out what my fellow Matrix buddies, Camilla and Wendy, made this week from the section called Gazpacho +12 ways.

To quote Mr. Bittman, "Gazpacho is so easy to prepare that children old enough to manage a blender can make it themselves." So there you go! If you'd like to serve a soup appetizer in the summer, gazpacho is the answer. I've been to parties where the host serves it in cute little shot glasses with tiny spoons during the cocktail hour. So much fun.

I added a roasted Anaheim chile to this soup to give it a little zip, and garnished it with cilantro. It was refreshing and delicious.

tomatoes, soup, gazpacho

soup, appetizer, tomato

Spanish

Yield: 4 servings

Grilled Summer Vegetable Gazpacho

ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds tomatoes
• 1 red onion, sliced into rounds
• 1 zucchini, halved
• 2 slices of bread
• 1/2 Anaheim chile, sliced lengthwise, stemmed, seeds removed (optional)
• Enough olive oil for brushing the vegetables, plus 3 tablespoons
• 1 tablespoon red wine or sherry vinegar
• 1 clove garlic, peeled
• 1 cup water
• Salt and pepper
• Chopped parsley or cilantro for garnish

instructions

1. Rub/brush the tomatoes, onion slices, zucchini halves, bread slices, and optional chile with olive oil and grill or broil until lightly charred. 
2. Add the charred vegetables and bread slices to the bowl of a food processor. Add the 3 tablespoons of olive oil, vinegar, garlic clove, and water, and pulse until you have an almost smooth but  slightly chunky texture. Chill until cold. 
3. Season with salt and pepper to taste and garnish with parsley or, if you added the chile, cilantro. 

https://www.karenskitchenstories.com/2018/07/grilled-summer-vegetable-gazpacho.html

An InLinkz Link-up

Interested in more cold soup recipes? Check out this spicy gazpacho and this tomato and melon soup. Both cold soups are completely refreshing and perfect when summer is blazing.