Watermelon Gazpacho

Photo by Kyra Socolof

I have been cooking and baking like crazy, but oddly enough it’s not been for happy occasions. From barbecued chicken, roasted potatoes and corn salad to brownies and biscotti, food has been sailing out of my kitchen and winding up at the homes of various friends, one whose husband just had open heart surgery, and not one, but two whose father-in-laws passed away. Last week, I finally had a chance to whip up something for a celebration. My friend Roberta was having a Father’s Day dinner cum party for her daughter Natasha’s high school graduation.

I decided to prepare watermelon gazpacho, which I hadn’t made since last summer. The first time I tried it out was after taking a hike with my neighbor Lauren and another friend, Jessica. Walking along the windy, wooded paths in Rockefeller Park, Jessica told us about this amazing watermelon gazpacho that she had tasted while on vacation with her husband and two sons. “I ordered it for an appetizer at dinner and it was so good that I insisted everyone try it. But when I got it back there was hardly anything left,” she lamented. “I really wish I had a good recipe for that gazpacho so I could make it at home.” Then she looked at me with a big smile and said, “Hey, since you’re the Inspired Chef, I was hoping maybe you could find one for me."
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I remember thinking that it was so unusual to have watermelon as a base for gazpacho, a culinary term that usually refers to a chilled tomato-based, raw vegetable soup. In fact, I wasn’t so sure I would even like it with watermelon. I have a rule about fruit and that’s that it should be a stand alone. That means no stewed apricots or prunes with my chicken, no fruit jams or jellies in my cake, and certainly, until now, no fruit in my soup. In fact, only in the past few years have I included berry and apple pies in my repertoire (OK, I can also manage some fruit in my sangria).

Yet Jessica had posed a challenge, one that I felt I had to meet. There were a few hurdles that I had to overcome first, however. To begin with, my husband, Bob, only dislikes three foods in the entire world and they are liver, sole and – you guessed it – watermelon!

“I don’t understand, how could you possibly not like watermelon?” I once asked him. “Did your mom force feed it to you as a child?

“No,” he said

“Did you swallow a seed by mistake?”

“No, I just don’t like it.”

“Don’t worry. You probably won’t event taste the watermelon in this gazpacho.”

Bob shrugged his shoulders, which I took to mean “You’re going to make it anyway, so go ahead.”

The next setback happened when I searched the Internet and discovered a recipe on Epicurious.com for “Watermelon and Cucumber Gazpacho.” On the pro side, in addition to the watermelon, there were a lot of fresh vegetables on the list – cucumber, red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, jalapeno chili, celery, and red onion – plus mint (which I had growing in a pot on my deck) and limes. The con side was that the veggies all had to be diced into small pieces, the mint needed to be finely chopped, and the limes had to be squeezed, none of it difficult but all very time consuming. I decided to halve the recipe, finally making it for Bob and me at the end of the summer. It turned out great (Bob even conceded so), but I didn’t blog about it at the time because it was too late in the season. You should definitely make this when there are bins of local watermelons for sale in the grocery store.

Roberta was expecting around 30 people at her house, so this time around I had to triple the recipe instead of cutting it in half. You can probably imagine the assorted produce taking over my refrigerator, not to mention the bowling ball-sized watermelon on my counter. Since this was going to be a relatively big task, I decided I would prepare the soup in stages over a three-day period. Coincidentally enough, I was taking another hike with Lauren and told her about my plan. She said to be careful because she had once made tomato-based gazpacho and put it in a glass jar. Driving to visit friends on Long Island, the sun beat down on the gazpacho, and the tomatoes, cucumber and garlic created a mini science experiment gone awry, causing enough expanding gas to break the bottle. “Well, hopefully nothing that exciting will happen here,” I said.

In preparation, I chopped up the vegetables and put them in a Ziploc bag in the fridge (I like to keep the onion and jalapeno in a separate bag so the other vegetables don’t absorb their strong bite). Then I took most of the watermelon and pureed it in the blender. I added in the squeezed lime juice, red wine vinegar and salt, thus making my so-called “broth,” a bright pink liquid bursting with watermelon pulp. Dipping in a spoon for a taste test, I was greeted by a cool sweetness tempered by the acidity of the lime juice and vinegar. I stored the “broth” in plastic containers in the fridge. Finally, I chopped the remaining few cups of watermelon that I hadn’t pureed and packaged that up as well.

The next morning, I pulled the assorted plastic bags and containers out of the refrigerator and poured them into a large pot, stirring well to make sure all the different ingredients were well integrated. The soup smelled so fresh, like it had come straight from the garden. It also looked appealing with its rainbow of colors – pink, red, purple, yellow and green – but would it taste as good as I remembered? I stuck a soup spoon into the pot to sample the goods. I bit into the crunchy veggies, enjoying my “salad in a soup” perfumed by sweet mint. It wasn’t spicy enough though, so I chopped up a little more onion and jalapeno and also decided to puree some more watermelon to increase the liquid to vegetable ratio.

When I arrived at Roberta’s, she poured the soup into a beautiful antique white china punch bowl. It came with about 20 little cups, which were the perfect size for serving the gazpacho. Natasha tried the soup first and said she loved it. It turned out to be a big hit with all the guests.

My oldest son, Sam, almost 20, was the last holdout.

“Just try it for me,” I said.

“Hmm, I’m not quite sure how to approach it,” he said. “Do I use a spoon or a fork? And why is it cold?”

He tentatively put a spoonful into his mouth. “Mmm, it’s good,” he said with a smile on his face. I do admit you have to be a little open-minded to try watermelon gazpacho, but once you do, I guarantee you’ll want more!


WATERMELON AND CUCUMBER GAZPACHO
Bon Appetit, August 2005
By Pat Cora

Ingredients:
1 3-pound seedless watermelon, diced (about 5 cups), divided
1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, diced (about 1 cup)
1 medium-size red bell pepper, seeded, diced (about 1 cup)
1 medium-size yellow bell pepper, seeded, diced (about 1 cup)
1 small jalapeno chili, seeded, minced
3 pale green inner celery stalks, diced (about ½ cup)
½ small red onion, diced (about 1 cup)
¼ cup finely chopped fresh mint
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
¼ teaspoon salt


Puree 4 cups watermelon in blender until smooth. Transfer puree to large bowl. Add remaining 1 cup diced watermelon and next 10 ingredients; stir to combine. Cover gazpacho and refrigerate until cold.