Roasted Tomato Gazpacho with Yellow Plum Salsa

Roasted Tomato Gazpacho with Plum Salsa

There are two kinds of people: those who are excited by soup and those who are not. I neatly fall into the first camp. To be fair, it’s easy to be excited by anything when your earliest memories came from a kitchen like my grandmother’s.

I remember beautiful and rustic potages, aromatic and creamy leek and potato, cold cucumber soup in the summer with a dollop of cream on top.  I remember a bouillabaisse in the South of France when I was a little girl- I had a mussel I knew was bad, but I just threw the mussel to the side and kept eating because I’d never tasted a broth so good.

My father loved soup too, I remember the way he’d say “Passe le beurre, si vous plais” in his comically bad French accent. He’d joyously drop a pat of butter into his potage, swirling it around with the sour cream and fresh herbs.  Soup wasn’t just a seasonal thing in our family. Vicchysoise and cucumber soup made appearances, but more common in the summer months was soup au pistou, and something that could almost be called a ratatouille soup (tojours sans aubergine!).

Though parts of my family lived just 45 minutes from the Spanish border, gazpacho never made an appearance on my childhood table. Here’s how my first encounter with gazpacho went down.

“What’s it called?” I asked. Skeptical of the uncooked tomatoes, and a name that sounded entirely made up. So skeptical, in fact, I almost didn’t try that soup. It was the 80s and my mom and dad were obsessed with their new Vitamix. My mom was usually a pretty fantastic cook, but these blended creations were far from her best work. This gazpacho was not looking too promising.

“It’s Spanish,” my mother assured me. “You probably even ate it when you were there.”

Of course, my mom knew the magic words. I had loved Spain- everything about it, and if I’d “probably” had gazpacho, it would stand to reason that I’d loved it too.  Funny thing is, I don’t particularly remember my mom’s gazpacho other than thinking it tasted sort of like salsa.  I also don’t remember her ever making it again.

I do remember being very into gazpacho and Spanish food in general after that. I ordered gazpacho each time I saw it on a menu, and began to suggest Spanish restaurants when we went out to dinner. Eventually, I found a place in North Beach that I would fall in love with. The food was so-so, but the gazpacho was cold and fresh, the sangria was a revelation, and the flamenco was sublime. Plus they passed the bota bag early and often- never thinking to check if I was 21. Incidentally I did celebrate my 21^st birthday there. By then, my flauxmenco  dancing (see how I did that faux + flamenco) was only half dreadful. A typical evening involved me in a steamy embrace with the flamenco dancer, being dragged across the floor, with a rose in my teeth. Salut!

Now where were we? Roasted Tomato Gazpacho!  Each summer, I make gazpacho at least a half dozen times. Each time, I’m sure I’ve found my favorite recipe.   This one is stunningly good. I start by roasting heirloom tomatoes low and slow just like I learned from Molly Weizenberg’s beautiful memoir. The soup is smoky and thick and topped with a salsa of yellow tomatoes, cucumbers, and yellow plums. It’s good, really, really good. Sexy good. So good you might want to put on some Spanish guitar and stomp around your kitchen flauxmenco style, just don’t forget to remove the thorns from your rose before you put it between your teeth.