White Almond Gazpacho

I bet you thought we died or something huh? Well, to make up for it, tonight I'm making TWO posts. This one is going to be a quick one...because I'm more excited about the next one!

I'm not quite sure why we haven't tried this one yet. It's really simple. When I think of Gazpacho, I think of summer, so perhaps now that the weather is warmer, it caught my eye.

Just about only components that needed 'cooking' in this recipe was the making of Garlic Confit. This is something everyone should do at least once. You get a few rewards. 1.) you get garlic confit, which is just about as good as candy 2.) you get garlic oil, which is about as good as garlic confit!

It's as simple as this: Put a few cloves in a pan, add oil, bring heat up to high, then turn on low for about an hour, turn off heat and let it sit for another hour...drain.

When done, you can use those leftover jars you collect for this sort of thing.

The next component that needed to be cooked, was toasting some bread and some almonds. 

Then, blend the rest of the ingredients together and call it a day!

Almost...

First, you have to have a snack. 

Then you have to strain the Gazpacho...which is actually harder than I thought. This is probably due to me not having a decent chinois and only a somewhat fine strainer. I used that strainer and some cheese cloth. 

Laurie prepped all of the garnish for this dish. 

And THEN we put it all together....

Thoughts: It was interesting. I've never had it at the Restaurant before so I can't really compare it. I think if I messed with the balancing of the vinegar, salt, and pepper I could get it spot on, but this one didn't knock it out of the park for me. I was really happy with the texture though, no grit and smooth. What did make it good was the garnish of grapes and such. Although, I don't think I'd serve this dish on it's own. It's not 'interesting' enough to serve as an amuse/small-bite, and it's just not a dish you could eat a giant bowl of as a first course. I think this dish would be perfect as an accompaniment on a dish of something else. Nicholas mentions grilled calamari or pickled oysters and I think that would be a great idea. This is 'half' a dish. In the picture in the book, you can't see the 'other' side of this dish to make it out, but it does appear to be calamari. Because of the pesky/trendy/artsy depth of field on the picture, it's hard to tell.

We didn't pair the wine with this dish. It was recommended a crisp white Spanish wine made from the Albarino grape. I didn't get to that chapter in Zraly's book yet!