I love multi-purpose recipes, and I love re-purposing the kitchen accessories and serving pieces I have to make the most of them – and this recipe does both. The gazpacho is smooth in texture but strong in flavor, and while it makes a great appetizer – particularly with the addition of a mustard cream garnish (a great recipe from The Paris Cookbook by Patricia Wells) – I found that adding some vodka to the mix gave me a whole new kind of cocktail shooter. I have a beautiful vodka and caviar server which I was given as a gift many years ago, and now I know why I haven’t used it before – it’s really a gazpacho shooter-and-crudites server (at least that’s how I should have been using it). Now there’s both a reason and a recipe.
However you decide to serve it, I think you’re going to love it!
Serves: 4
Prep time: One hour
For the gazpacho:
Ingredients
- 3 pounds ripe tomatoes, quartered and seeded
- 2 red bell peppers, trimmed of seeds and roughly chopped
- 1 tablespoons sugar
- 1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- ¼ cup sherry vinegar
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- sea salt to taste
- 4 shots vodka – optional if serving as a cocktail
Directions
- Puree tomatoes in a food processor, adding peppers, cucumbers, garlic, vinegar, olive oil, sugar, and salt.
- Put the mixture though a mesh sieve to remove any chunks – mixture should be completely smooth.
- If you’re serving this as a cocktail, add vodka. Refrigerate for at least three hours until gazpacho is very cold. Served in chilled containers, and garnish with mustard cream.
- 6 egg yolks
- 2 cups whole milk
- 1 cup cream
- 1 1/2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- Whisk egg yolks and set aside. In a saucepan, cook milk over medium heat until bubbles begin to form at the edges.
- Whisk the hot milk into the egg yolks, stirring constantly, and return mixture to saucepan.
- Set aside a mixing bowl with a mesh sieve on top, to have it ready for the cooked mustard cream.
- Put saucepan on low heat and stir constantly until sauce begins to thicken.
- Remove from heat and continue stirring for several more minutes until cooking is completed.
- The texture will be like heavy cream. Stir in the cream and mustard to combine and pass mixture through the sieve. Cool.
- Transfer mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze.
- Mustard cream will be the consistency of ice cream, but will melt slowly in the cooled gazpacho.
For the mustard cream:
Adapted from Patricia Wells’ The Paris Cookbook
