Rooftop Gourmet

I don’t know about you, but this heat wave is starting to get exhausting. With record temperatures skyrocketing to 100+, the last thing I felt like doing was turning on my stove or standing over a scorching hot grill. Just stepping outside onto the deck felt like walking into a giant oven. I came home from work, peeled off my sweaty button-down, and decided to make soup. Yes… that’s right, soup in a heat wave.

 Gazpacho is a traditional Spanish soup made from raw vegetables, that originated in the southern region of Andalusia.

Now a days, gazpacho has many different variations, and the term gazpacho is almost generic for chilled vegetable soup. The good thing about this refreshing, summer soup is that it can be made entirely in your blender or food processor.

Most countries have some type of staple, peasant dish that incorporates crusty, day-old bread into a fabulous meal, such as the Italian tomato and bread soup or panzanella, a cold bread salad. Gazpacho is Spain’s equivalent of these peasant dishes that takes leftovers and brings them to life.

 Since, the preparation is so simple, I decided to make both the classic red and white varieties. The red gazpacho is tomato based, and in my opinion tastes better when it is chunky and has some texture.

I didn’t have any day old bread, so I toasted some sliced white bread and cut the crusts off like I would for a toddler’s PB & J. I soaked the crusty bread in some ice water for about twenty minutes while I got my blender ready.

From there on out it’s just a matter of tossing in different ingredients as if you were making a smoothie. I rang the water out of the bread by squeezing the soggy toast in clenched fists and added that first, along with tons of cherry tomatoes, red onion, jalapeno, garlic and cucumber.

 Cucumber, bread, garlic and tomatoes are staples in red gazpacho, but I enjoy a little heat from the jalapenos. As the blender roared away, I added a stream of extra virgin olive oil, and a splash of Spanish Sherry vinegar. The bread thickens the soup and makes it all come together.

After everything is incorporated, I passed the liquid through a fine mesh strainer to remove some of the gritty skins, pulp, and larger chunks of bread. With the red gazpacho, I like a chunky texture so I reserved a small dice of all of the components that I folded into the puree after. I cleaned out my blender and refrigerated the gazpacho until it was time to serve. My white gazpacho is a little bit more elegant and refined than the red. I start off the same way, with the soggy bread, and garlic cloves, but I then toss in some toasted almonds.

 The almonds give the soup a nuttiness to balance out the sweeter flavors of white grapes. Into the blender goes some of the ice water, and some white grape juice followed by the Sherry vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil. I usually press the “liquefy” button on my blender for this soup because a smooth, velvety texture is more important. I also pass the liquid through the strainer twice to make sure there is no grit in the mouthfeel.

 The white gazpacho is then seasoned, chilled, and set aside until it’s ready to serve. The longer these soups sit in the fridge, the more flavorful they get, which makes leftovers a must. Since I set my thermostat for 68 degrees, I felt that it was okay to turn my stove on for only two minutes. I quickly seared some fresh scallops on one side until they were golden brown and caramelized.

 Seafood and gazpacho are a great combination. A lot of times restaurants will serve their gazpacho in a martini glass with a few jumbo shrimp dangling over the edge. I plated a few of the scallops like buoys in the middle of each soup and topped them with a few different garnishes. With two different soups and some light seafood, we needed a wine that was equally refreshing.

I chose to open a bottle of Fetish Field of Dreams Moscato, from the Barossa Valley, Australia. This wine is modeled after the slightly sweet, slightly sparkling wines from Northern Italy. The crisp, effervescence is so refreshing with the soup. When you pour the cold wine into the glass a foamy head appears, reminiscent of a Belgian Ale. It gives off aromas of flowers, white peaches and honeydew melons.

Unlike other dessert wines, the moscato is low in alcohol and isn’t sticky and syrupy, which makes it pleasant to serve with a meal. The subtle, sweet fruit complimented the spiciness of the red gazpacho, and was pleasantly elegant with the white. The tiny bubbles cleared your palate after each sip and prepared you for a slurp of a totally different flavor. After tasting the wine, and the soup separately, I realized that a few splashes of the bubbly moscato would actually give the soup a whole new character.

Marinating fresh berries in Moscato is also a great dessert when spooned over a creamy custard. We had plenty of leftovers of soup to bring to the pool the next day, but the Field of Dreams disappeared quickly. Thankfully, I didn’t start hearing voices about building a baseball field in the middle of South Boston, but if it meant that rain will come, I might consider it.

With Passover approaching, I thought I’d attempt to make a Kosher for Passover meal for the first time in my life. Other than a handful of Bar Mitzvahs, a few friends, and a ‘Jews in America’ class in college, I don’t know much about Jewish tradition. I was forced to do a little research before preparing this meal and I’m afraid that after reading the Kashrut (Jewish dietary laws), I am more confused than ever.

To the best of my ability, I tried to conceptualize the restrictions and came up with a Kosher friendly version of my favorite breakfast food; Eggs Benedict. The reason that Jews only eat Matzah on Passover is because it reminds them that they didn’t have time to bake the bread when they left the slavery of Egypt. They took the unleavened bread into the hot desert where it baked under the hot sun into a thin, crisp cracker.

Prohibited unleavened breads means my English Muffins are no good to me in this dish so I was in search of a replacement.

Even though they’re more commonly seen on a Hanukkah dinner table, I decided to make potato latkes because I used to eat them at friends’ houses growing up and from what I remembered, they were delicious.

I peeled and shredded five large russet potatoes into a bowl lined with cheese cloth. You’d be surprised at how much liquid is inside of a single potato. The ‘pouch’ of potato flakes needs to be rung out before adding other ingredients or frying or else they won’t get crispy on the outside. Five potatoes yielded almost two cups of starchy water! Once we got them as dry as possible, we added a shredded onion, sliced chives, eggs, and flour to the mix. Forming the mixture into patties is tricky because everything is pretty wet, but as soon as a blob hits the hot pan, everything stays in place.

I fried the latkes on both sides to a nice golden brown and finished them in a low oven until it was time to serve. Horseradish root or other bitter ingredients are often used in Passover food preparation to remind Jews of the bitter and cruel ways that the Pharoah treated them when they were enslaved.

I dropped the Hollandaise sauce from the menu (my right forearm muscle was happy about that) and made a horseradish creme fraiche to spoon over the top of my egg.

Creme fraiche is a cultured cream, similar to sour cream but thicker and not as tart. Since bacon, ham or any pork product for that matter was out of the question, I needed a protein to layer atop a perfectly poached egg. I chose to use a smoked salmon because you don’t have to cook smoked fish, making it Kosher, and it wasn’t beef. The combination of beef and the milk in the creme fraiche sauce would have been a no-no.

I cracked open a few extra large farm fresh eggs and dropped them into a shallow pan of simmering water to poach. Whenever you’re poaching eggs, add a cap-full of white vinegar to the water; it will help the eggs hold their shape. As soon as the whites solidified, I removed the eggs with a slotted spoon and placed them on top of their matching latkes, followed by a paper thin wafer of smoked salmon, and a dollop of horseradish creme fraiche.

 I spooned some smoked Herring roe (caviar) on top of of the mock Benedict to add another smoky and salty aspect to the dish. The chives that I used to garnish the plate had been soaking in salted water because of another Passover tradition. Jews soak their vegetables in salted water to remind them of the tears that were shed during slavery in Egypt. The first bite was exhilarating as I pierced the quivering orb with a prong of my fork. The rich, buttery, yolk flowed out onto the plate and weaved its way into the tiny crevices of the potato latke. The latke was crispy an salty, the yolk was creamy, the salmon was cold and smoky, and the sauce was light with a kick of bitter heat. It was as if Sir Benedict Arnold was sitting down for brunch with King David of Isreal.

I paired this meal with a sweet wine called Moscato. The Moscato grape is famous in the town of Asti in northern Italy but this one is made by Carmel. I like Moscato because in this state, before it’s aged, it isn’t syrupy sweet; there is just a little bit of residual sugar, keeping the wine crisp on the finish. This young wine is only 5.5% alcohol because the natural sugars (which are still present in the wine… just taste it) haven’t transformed into alcohol yet. Not only is this sweet white perfect with the rich breakfast feast, it’s also Kosher for Passover.

There is a fine line between wines that are kosher and wines that are kosher for Passover. Wines that are kosher are created under a rabbi’s immediate supervision, with only Sabbath-observant Jewish males touching the grapes throughout the entire winemaking process. While all wines require some sort of mold or yeast for fermentation, kosher for Passover wines must be made from a mold that was never grown on bread. You can distinguish kosher for Passover wines by the letter P on the back label or the ‘Kasher L’Pesach’ written in Hebrew, stamped on the back as well. Kosher for Passover or not, this breakfast for dinner meal was Lelakek Et Ha’etzba’ot!