Monday, 29 October 2012

Day 169: White gazpacho


I’m emigrating!!! Seriously! Actually, no I’m not but I seriously cannot stick this cold weather. I know we’ve only just recently gone back to single digits temperature-wise but I’ve concluded that I need to live in a climate that never goes below 22°C. I’m one of those beings who is generally cold all of the time and, therefore, love my heat. Not too much of course. Over 30 degrees? No, that’s probably too warm. In fact, people generally complain that our house is like a sauna as most days of the year, I have the fire lit in the living room; hail, rain, sleet, snow, even summer when the sun has gone done, I’ll be sure to have the fire lit. The only exception is unless the very odd day that the outside temperature is actually over 22 degrees.

So, just out of curiosity, I Googled to see what country has an average temperature of 22 degrees and guess what I found?! The first search that came up was a group of islands called The Cook Islands on the South Pacific Ocean between Figi and French Polynesia. That, of course, meant absolutely nothing to me. Let’s just say that when I looked at the map, they are in a north-easterly direction from New Zealand. Apparently they have an average temperature of 22-28 degrees. The Cook Islands, eh?! Hmmm, almost sounds like fate (!). Anyway, I could have been doing with one of those warm 22-28 degree-days today as my next recipe White gazpacho was a cold soup and definitely not meant for a winter's day in Ireland. Here’s how I made it…

In a food processor, I whizzed up blanched almonds for 2 minutes, followed by finely grated garlic and two tablespoons of water which I whizzed for a further 2 minutes. Next, I added white bread with the crusts removed, olive oil and almost 250ml of ice-cold water. All of that whizzed for 3 minutes. To finish, I seasoned the mixture and served with a sprinkling of olive oil and some freshly ground black pepper.

The verdict…

A major no-no from Dear Husband. His words were, and I quote, “Eugh, rotten, eughh. Eughhh!!!”. Zero marks. Yes, zero. Personally, I thought it was hilarious. Ha ha. It does him no harm to get a bad recipe every now and then so that he can appreciate all the really good ones. My verdict? Erm, I really wasn’t fussed on this so I’m going to give it a 3. Maybe on a hot summer’s day, it would taste nicer but I can’t really imagine myself going out of my way to make this one again. I’d probably pick five other recipes before making this one again; therefore, it hasn’t made The List.

Overall, it was an extremely easy and quick recipe to make. The only plus on today’s weather was that the cold water coming out of the tap was actually freezing cold so I didn’t need to use ice to make the water ice-cold which is what the recipe said to use. And to think it’s only October and it’s going to get colder. Brrrrrrrr! Right, I’m off to put some more logs on the fire. I think the temperature is dipping here again. I hope you are all enjoying the remainder of the bank holiday… :)

No comments:

Post a Comment