Tomatillo gazpacho
Make the most of summer produce with a tangy gazpacho that manages to be both light and surprisingly hearty.
The calendar has turned to September, friends. Most years I’m desperate for the fall to come. I’d be happy if it was sweater weather and apple season all year round.
But this year I sort of wish I could freeze time (but also, skip over the next bit entirely). We still have a week before Kindergarten starts for M, which means, I’m not yet worrying about an email from the school saying that someone has Covid. And Z is at the perfect baby stage where he’s sleeping more, crying less (sort of), and has a personality, but isn't yet mobile.
I hate this instinct of mine to imagine that whatever is coming will be bad. Or that if I imagine all the possible bads, that I can stop them from coming. What is that? Did I inherit some DNA from great great great great-grandmother Esther who escaped the pogroms?
Anyway, I’ve been dealing with all this dread by eating gobfulls of not-great food. I’m not even trying to food shame myself. I don’t think anyone would classify my current eating regimen as “balanced.” And I’m certainly not eating only things that taste absolutely delicious. I’m eating for the sole purpose of thinking about something other than my fears. It’s not great, Dan.
Consequently, I’m trying to come up with meals that are a little more veg-heavy while still being fun and tasty and most importantly, simple. Because, though I’m cooking and eating to stop myself from worrying, I’m also deeply committed to worrying and thus, don’t want to take too much time away from the task of imagining any and all worst-case-scenarios. You know, in case I CAN stop them from happening with my imagination.
So, this gazpacho. I used to hate gazpacho. As Lisa Simpson described, it’s tomato soup served ice cold. But when it’s good, it’s oh so much more than that. Our favorite farmstand had tons of beautiful tomatillos, so I bought some and threw them into the toaster oven (but you can obviously use a real oven too) and then threw them into the soup. The rest is really your standard Spanish gazpacho with none of the American faff that we often add. Think veggies at their peak, aromatics, salt, vinegar, and lots of olive oil.
I also realized that, while straining is a pain and you end up throwing out a lot of stuff that you could otherwise eat, it also makes the texture SO MUCH BETTER. So now I strain even though it’s a pain. But you certainly don’t have to. It saves time and this recipe yields a lot more soup when it includes the tougher stuff.
A couple of notes:
Please don’t reduce the oil content in this soup. It gives the dish its body and staying power. Without it, you might as well open a can of V8.
Tomatillos are a little sour and as such, give another dimension to the soup. But you can absolutely skip them and use all tomatoes.
Start with 1/2 tsp of kosher salt. I’ve found that this soup can easily taste too salty if you go overboard.
Tomatillo Gazpacho
Yield: about 3.5 cups (depending on how juicy your veggies are)
Time: 25 minutes, all active (less if you choose not to strain the soup)
¼ lb tomatillos, husks removed, rinsed of the sticky residue, and halved
1¾ lb heirloom, plum, or other red tomatoes
1 small cucumber, peeled and roughly chopped
1 small zucchini, roughly chopped
3 large scallions, green and white parts roughly chopped
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1/2-1 tsp fine sea salt
½ cup olive oil
Preheat the oven or toaster oven to 350. On a parchment or foil covered baking sheet, place the halved tomatillos face down. Bake for 5-7 minutes or until the tomatillos have softened a bit, but aren’t completely mushy.
While the tomatillos are cooking, roughly chop the rest of the vegetables.
Add the tomatillos, tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, scallions, vinegar, and salt to your blender and blend on high for 2 minutes.
While the blender runs, add the olive oil in a slow stream until it’s completely incorporated, about 2 more minutes.
Strain the soup through a fine mesh sieve.
Test for seasoning and add more salt or vinegar if needed.
Chill for 2 hours or up to 1 week.
Broccoli tacos
Roasted broccoli, poblano and meunster cheese sauce, and broccoli micro greens make for a quick, nutritious, and lip-smackingly good meatless monday or taco tuesday meal.
A few weeks ago, M decided that he didn’t like tacos. He still liked tortillas and all of the fillings, but brand anything as a “taco” and he was not interested. I only cared because often, the easiest route to dinner goes right through fridge-clearing-taco-ville. Maybe if I’d offered a Chocotaco he would have been into it? We’ll never know.
But while I was making these broccoli babies for the first time, he commented, “that smells really good.” Dear reader, he ate it. The whole thing. It was definitely the poblano cheese sauce, which I would like to put on everything for the rest of my life.
Instead of making a queso with cornstarch added at the end, I make a roux to start and added the cheese once the milk had thickened. I’m sure going the traditional queso route would also have been delicious. I just chose something else because life is about choices.
A couple of notes:
Keep an eye on the broccoli after about 15 minutes. The cooking time really depends on how fresh your broccoli is, how large your florets are, and how hot your oven runs.
Add in any other bits and bobs to the tacos that you want. I used broccoli because its a favorite in our house, but other roasted veggies or proteins would be delicious here.
Double the cheese sauce. Just do it. This recipe makes enough for about 6 tacos, but the sauce makes a delicious dip for chips or raw vegetables.
Broccoli tacos
Yield: 6 tacos
Time: About 40 minutes, mostly active
1 lb broccoli florets (buy 1.5 lbs because you’ll cut off the stalks)
3-4 Tbsp olive oil
Large pinch of salt
1 large poblano chili (or 1 small can of pre-roasted chili)
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp flour
¾ cup whole milk
3 oz muenster cheese
1 oz cheddar cheese
½ tsp sea salt
¼ cup minced poblano chili
6 corn soft taco shells
Broccoli microgreens
Preheat the oven to 425. Spread out the broccoli florets on a baking sheet and toss with the olive oil and large pinch of salt. Roast for 20-25 minutes, or until the broccoli is as crispy as you’d like. Stir the florets around on the sheet pan halfway through cooking.
While the broccoli is roasting, make the sauce.
Roast your poblano pepper. Turn on the stove burner and place the washed and dried pepper directly on the flame. Have a pair of tongs handy and turn the pepper every 30 seconds or so to ensure that it’s charred everywhere. This usually takes me about 5 minutes.
Once the skin is blistered all over, place the pepper in a large bowl or paper bag and either cover it with plastic wrap or a tea towel or close the paper bag tightly at the top. Let the pepper stand for 5-10 minutes until the steam has loosened the pepper’s skin. Check by pinching some of the pepper and the skin should slip off easily. If it doesn’t, let it steam for a few more minutes and try again.
Once the pepper has steamed, remove as much of the skin as you can, the top, and the inner seeds. Chop the pepper into small pieces. One pepper should make a scant ½ cup of chopped, roasted peppers.
In a small pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and let the mixture bubble lightly until it has turned a medium golden color, about 5 minutes.
Whisk in the milk and stir thoroughly to combine. Continue to stir as the milk bubbles very slightly on the edges. If the milk bubbles up too vigorously, turn down the heat. When the milk mixture has visibly thickened and coats the back of a spoon, add the salt and cheese and stir until the cheese has melted.
Stir in the chopped roasted poblanos.
Assemble the tacos.
Heat up the tortillas in a hot, dry pan for about 1 minute each. When hot, fill the shells with the roasted broccoli and top with the cheese sauce. Top with the broccoli microgreens, avocado, grated cotija cheese, and any other toppings you like.
Corn and hominy salad
Take advantage of corn season with this raw, refreshing, and super flavorful corn and hominy salad.
This salad was inspired by elote or Mexican street corn. When we lived in NYC, my favorite thing to get at the street fairs that popped up on summer weekends (we called them “socks and sausages”) was the grilled corn with mayo, chili powder, cilantro, and cotija cheese. Spray a little lime over those babies and they were the perfect mix of smoky, salty, creamy, and acidic.
I started developing this recipe last summer and never got around to posting it before corn season was over. This salad uses raw corn, so you really want to get the freshest cobs at the peak of their season. You can use frozen or otherwise not-peak corn and give it a quick saute before making the salad, but the fresh, raw stuff is truly the best.
So, there are about 12 million elote salad recipes on the interwebs, so what makes this one different, you ask? Hominy!
Hominy is dried corn kernels that have been soaked in an alkaline solution. Hominy is actually used to make masa, which is the key ingredient in corn tortillas, tamales, and other staples of Mexican cuisine. It has a light corn flavor with a slightly nutty aftertaste. Actually, once you taste hominy, you know that it tastes exactly the way corn tortillas taste.
The hominy adds bulk to the salad that makes it more versatile than a side dish. I’ve added this corn concoction into other meal salads and eaten it on its own with some shredded rotisserie chicken. So, while technically a side dish, this salad can easily transform into the star of the show.
A couple of notes:
I only use 1/2 of a garlic clove because I want to be able to taste all of the ingredients rather than just raw garlic. If you really like garlic, feel free to use more, but I REALLY REALLY like garlic and 1/2 of a clove was more than enough for me.
You can find prepared hominy in cans at basically any grocery store. If you have some dried hominy that you want to rehydrate, find instructions here.
Cotija cheese is a dry, salty cheese that’s close to a farmer’s cheese. Kind of like if Feta and Parmesan had a baby. If you can’t find it, substitute a dry, nutty, crumbly cheese.
Corn and hominy salad
Yield: about 5 cups of salad
Time: 10 minutes
4 medium ears of corn, kernels removed (about 3½ cups)
1 cup hominy
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, tightly packed (stems and leaves are fine)
3 Tbsp mayo
½ tsp kosher salt
Juice of 1 large lime (1 Tbsp)
½-1 tsp chili powder, to taste
½ large garlic clove
Water, as needed to thin out the dressing, added 1 tsp at a time
3 oz cotija cheese
Remove the corn kernels with a knife. I like to use a bundt pan to catch them as they fly around, but any old bowl will do.
Rinse the hominy and add it to the bowl of corn.
In a blender or food processor, add the cilantro, mayo, oil, salt, lime juice, chili powder (start with 1/2 tsp and add more to taste), and garlic and blend until smooth, adding tiny amounts of water to thin out the sauce as necessary.
Mix the cilantro dressing into the corn and hominy.
Taste for seasoning and add more salt, chili powder or lime juice.
Mix in the shredded or grated cojita.