Gazpacho !!!

Ok, so I've been meaning to do some spanish cooking for a while.  I also am becoming totally obsessed with soup. It follows that I should learn to make gazpacho. As it turns out... well, it's the easiest soup ever (At least compared to Tom Yum, Lamb Pho, and other soups that I've been making).

As with any new dish I am planning and have never made before, I like to consult several different sources and figure out what the common ingredients and procedures are. Especially when a dish is a big cultural item like this, the recipes tend to vary wildly. Asking for someone's gazpacho recipe is like asking for someone's pasta sauce recipe, or chili, or something...

Anyway, I took a look at a whole slew of options, and tried to figure out what seemed like common ground, and which of the unique items in each recipe sounded good. Here's what I came up with.  I made a huge batch, too... so i'm going to say this will easily serve 8.

ingredients

4 large tomatoes
2 medium cucumbers
1 medium zuccini
bread (see below)
1 large bell pepper
1 jalapeño
juice of 2 limes
5 cloves of garlic
1 medium red onion
fresh parsley
fresh basil
3 cups tomato juice
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. cumin
S & P

instructions
This is a SUPER easy recipe. Waiting hours and hours for it to chill properly is really the only hard part. Or maybe peeling the tomatoes, but I'm about to make that easy for you.

Easiest way I've found to peel tomatoes:

1) Boil enough water in a pot to cover the tomato you're going to peel.
2) Cut an X in the skin of the tomato on the opposite side of the stem
3) Briefly submerse the tomato in the boiling water
4) Immediately remove tomato and run under very cold water. the skin should pretty much just slough off.

Now that the tomatoes are peeled, the only other item you need to prep is the bread. I used about 6 inches of french bread... you could use a few slices of whatever bread is laying around, or like a kaiser roll or something. I don't see it mattering all that much.

Basically you want about a baseball sized lump of bread when it's done soaking. Take the bread, rip it up in chunks, and let it soak up some water for a few minutes, then squeeze gently to get the bulk of the water out.
(Soaking just makes it work better in the blender.)

Other than that, you pretty much just dice everything and either put half of that item in the blender and the other half aside for later. Start with the bread, the garlic, the cumin, and one of the tomatoes, then just start blending everything else in.

Two of the tomatoes, one cucumber, half the zuccini, half of the bell pepper, and half of the onion should be diced (small dicing... 1/4 to 1/2 inch), put in a bowl, covered and stored in the fridge for later.

Everything else gets chopped coarsely and thrown in a blender or food processor. You may have to do the blending in two parts if you don't have access to a crazy commercial blender like I do. (Thanks AJ!) Take the blended part, add salt and pepper to taste, and refrigerate this as well...  If you have the patience, give it a good dozen or so hours to chill and for the flavors to blend.

Try to wait at least 4 hours though.

When ready to serve, chop up some more fresh basil and parsley, add the diced veggies to the blended veggies, mix well, ladle into bowls, top with the fresh herbs, and serve.  (If it's a real hot summer day, serving in chilled bowls can be a nice touch)

Tomato