I like tomatoes! (and gazpacho)

I busted out the Magic Bullet for the first time in 3 years last night for... gazpacho.

Yes, I've owned a Magic Bullet for 3 years (got one right before moving to Boston) and for 3 years I never even took it out of the box. Now I feel like I should be on an infomercial because I find myself wondering how I ever got by without it. Yes, I had to make the gazpacho in batches, because admittedly the Bullet doesn't have a high capacity. But it works so fast, and made such quick work out of things that it was worth it to blend the soup in small batches.

We decided to make gazpacho from Jose Andres's cookbook, which calls for a particular brand of sherry that I hunted for and found at the Liquor World near my office---a particular brand of sherry that happened to set me back $25. Dios mio! At least the recipe calls for a scant quarter-cup of the stuff, so we'll be making batches of gazpacho with this stuff for a while.

But oh! What a difference a sherry makes! This gazpacho was amazing stuff. Jose calls for straining it, but I actually like the chunks in my soup, so it was perfection. It was tangy from the vinegar (we used red wine vinegar), and the sherry added a luxurious taste to it. And of course, this being a recipe by Jose Andres, it was full of olive oil, which just made it all the tastier. And you really do have to add the little cut-up tomatoes and thin-sliced cucumbers (which I sliced paper-thin, thanks to the mandolin slicer I bought this weekend on a whim), and the cubes of bread toasted in olive oil. We used a roasted garlic artisan loaf from Shaw's that's pretty tasty. (Shaw's has a surprisingly good bakery.) Our soup turned out more orange than pink because the market was out of green bell peppers and we used an orange one. Still delicious though. Very refreshing, and surprisingly filling. I definitely recommend trying this one out. It's simple and satisfying. To know that such a fine soup hails from my homeland makes me proud to be a Spaniard!