It's Memorial Day weekend, and I had all sorts of ambitions around different things I wanted to create. As usual, the plans change. I did manage to poach an egg in the microwave, something I have never done, and let me tell you, it's AMAZING! Takes one minute,use the plate that you used to cover the egg to eat the egg (and a piece of sprouted grain toast), and you are done. Suddenly Monday-Sunday breakfast may take on more than just plain oatmeal and a few blueberries.
Bon Appetit's instructions to poach an Egg in the microwave
Anyway, my big idea was to marinate a roasting chicken and barbeque it over indirect heat on a charcoal grill. The problem is I started marinating said chicken at 4pm on Sunday. More on that later, when I actually roast the chicken today.
We decided to create a little of this, little of that based on what we had in the fridge. We ended up with some smoked chilean sea bass from Whole Foods (really yummy), some smoked shrimp from the local seafood market (even yummier), a sort of salad of chorizo, chunks of baked potato, apples, parsley and a grainy mustard viniagrette, and some hummus.
My final contribution was a take on a greek salad with chunks of heirloom tomato, cucumber, flash pickled sweet onion, yellow, red, and orange peppers, feta, a few castelvetrano olives, garlic, aged red wine vinegar, lemon, olive oil, fresh dill, and pepper. This was really tasty, but we weren't super hungry given there was so much food, so it ended up in the fridge overnight.
This morning, I poured all of it in the Blendtec on the soup setting for two cycles, and BOOM!, a new gazpacho is born. While the ingredients are similar to my other gazpacho recipe, it's a very different flavor profile with the feta and the castelvetrano olives. I actually think it might be better. I might go a little lighter on the vinegar next time if I were just making a gazpacho, but otherwise, it's quite perfect. I like the idea of letting the ingredients rest together overnight, it seemed to add something to all the flavors as a whole.
The soup has a beautiful rich tangerine color and a very smooth texture (you have to have a good blender or it just isn't the same). In the future I would make an oregano dusted sourdough crouton to enjoy with the gazpacho, and I would not forget to photograph this as a salad and a soup!
Not being one of those people who does a lot of repurposing with leftovers, this was a pleasant surprise that I would like to begin to build upon.
GREEK SALAD (and/or Gazpacho)
- 3-4 large high quality Tomatoes (no need to seed if you have a blendtec or vitamix, just core)
-6 mini red/yellow/orange peppers (I prefer the mini sweet peppers. core and seed)
-1 seedless cucumber, peeled
-1/2 sweet onion
-1 clove garlic, finely chopped
-1/4 cup high quality feta (if you can get the marinated danish feta or french feta, these are the best options, they are a little lower in sodium than the athenos), cubed.
-10 castelvetrano olives, pitted and sliced vertically
-handful of dill, chopped.
-juice of half a lemon
-3 tbsp aged red wine vinegar
-good drizzles of olive oil
-fresh ground black pepper
Roughly chop the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumber and place in bowl.
To pickle the onion, bring two cups of water to a boil with 3 tbsp sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/2 cup white vinegar. Reduce to simmer. Add chopped onion for 30-45 seconds. Immediately drain and place in bowl of ice water. Drain again, pat dry, add to salad.
Add feta, olives, lemon, vinegar, olive oil, pepper, and finish with dill.
Serve as salad or blend to gazpacho....OR BOTH.
Repurposing has kind of been my word of the summer. I need to repurpose many things in my life, but that is a different blog.
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