Summer in a soup bowl Gazpacho

A couple of weeks ago my friends came over for a farm visit and we all pitched in with lunch.

Linda, myself and her 4 Colorado granddaughters

 Sometime during the sit-down Michele remarked Gazpacho is "summer in a soup bowl."  Precisely.  I thought I would share our luncheon menu since a lot of it came right from the garden/farm

Menu:

Gazpacho ( yes- even the 3 year old loved it)

Egg salad sandwiches

Watermelon pizza

Palmiers

Jun tea

Mis en place

Ingredients:

2 bell peppers, chopped into 1" square pieces

4 plum tomatoes, also 1" pieces

1 cucumber seeded but not peeled, 1 " pieces

1 red onion - 1 " pieces

3 garlic cloves, chopped finely

3 cups tomato juice or enough tomatoes to make your own

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1/4 cup good olive oil

1 1/2 tsp salt

pepper

avocado and or cilantro to garnish

Ina Garten's recipe on Food Network

Yes use a food processor but chop each vegetable up separately

Mix all veggies and tomato juice with olive oil and vinegar and store in the fridge for at least a day or two before serving

I have made this soup 3 times now and love each serving.  I will be sad when the tomatoes are gone.

Next up EGG SALAD sandwiches

Mis en place

EGG SALAD SANDWICHES

Ingredients

farm fresh or store bought pasture raised chicken eggs, hard cooked - I prefer to steam

mayonnaise

dijon mustard

red onions chopped fine

I dill pickle slice, chopped fine

fresh dill

salt and pepper

How to hard cook super fresh eggs:

When I first tried to hard boil my fresh eggs I found that the shells would not release from the white when I tried to peel them..  It happened the second, third and fourth times as well ????? So I did some research and found that super fresh eggs just don't do well boiled.  So I steam.  12 minutes in a steamer.  I could give you all of the chemistry behind this....Ask if you really want to know  otherwise just steam your eggs.  You will be glad you did.

Steam for 12 minutes.  Then cool in an ice water bath

Mix about 2 TBs of dijon mustard with about 1/2 cup mayonnaise to start then adjust as needed.  I used 6 eggs and this worked out well.  

Then add the red onion, dill pickle and fresh dill to the sauce.

Mix into the eggs

I use a box grater to cut up the egg but you can hand cut it as well

Assemble between two pieces of bread after piling on some condiments :  how about pickled onions?

I'll add the recipe to the end of the post

Add lettuce and as we did one nasturtium leaf.  The nasturtium leaves and blossoms are edible and add a bit of spice - kind of like arugula.

Egg salad sandwich with pickled onions, lettuce and nastursium leaves

Next up WATERMELON PIZZA

So much fun.  You can see that it is made up of a wedge of watermelon topped with blueberries and reap berries,  The "Cheese" is cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar and pushed through a pastry bag.  Linda's previous performance was with a little smaller hole in her bag thus a narrower stream of cream sheese/sugar

And for dessert:  PALMIERS - Gluten Free!!

Palmiers are a classic French pastry made from the pastry dough mille feuilles  (puff pastry)  This recipe is absolutely easy to make from Pepperidge Farm frozen puff pastry found in the freezer section of the grocery store and just follow Ina Gartens's recipe   But I decided to make it from scratch since I was really rusty from my school days at The Cordon Bleu in Paris.

Did you know that there are 739 layers of dough/butter/dough in the finished pate ?  You start out with a pie crust round then add a butter layer, wrap the edges of the pie pastry up and over the butter layer.  Now you have 3 layers.  With a sequence of rolling out and folding into thirds six times you end up with a beautiful uncooked dough

Roll the dough in sugar and cinnamon and then roll into a log by folding the outside edges two times each and meeting in the center,  Chill the dough again. 

Classic palmiers do not have cinnamon adulterating the flavor but what American does not like cinnamon sugar?

Then cut the chilled dough into slices

Put them one more time back into the fridge or freezer for a final chill then pop them into a preheated oven

450 degrees for just 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and sprinkle again with cinnamon sugar. 

These will go fast - especially with 9 people for lunch

I made this dough gluten free because my sweet Kate cannot have gluten.  But like any normal teenager she love loves pastries and bread.  Since she was coming for a visit I wanted to make these G-F palmiers for and with her,   She loved it 

We made this batch into twisted sticks.  Kate loves churros so this was our version of a G-F churro/palmier.  You can buy G-F frozen puff pastry in some markets @ $9/box l Yikes.  On the other hand the ingredients for making it at home was not much less.  Good news is I'm not rusty at the technique any more!

And that was our summer lunch!  

Hurricane Hilary has just past through here leaving a mess for all of us to clean up but not any damage here,  I think I have some time to make the pickled red onions 

I have an entire post dedicated to this condiment   Please click on this link to go to that post 

I use Marisa McClellan"s  Food in Jars book many times every summer and throughout the year.  You can also follow her website https://foodinjars.com for many additional ideas 

3 pounds of red onions, thinly sliced

2 cups apple cider vinegar

3/4 cups granulated sugar

1 1/2 cups water

2 TBs Kosher or pickling salt

2 tsp whole mustard seed

1 tsp celery seed

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Combine the vinegar, water, sugar and salt in a pot over high heat and bring the brine to a boil

Add sliced onions to brine and stir to combine,  Reduce heat to medium and simmer briefly to soften onions.

Combine the spices to blend and then divide among 3 pint size jars

Evenly divide the onions among the jars.  Use tongs to transfer.

Pour brine over onions.

Pickles need to cure 48 hours before eating.

I used to water bath preserve these but I find they last in the fridge just fine.....they never last too long.  If you make 3 jars - give one jar to a friend,