Uniformly Different, Uniformly Delicious

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So JoeHoya totally stole my Part II thunder.

With my extreme abundance of tomatoes over the weekend, I made two go-to tomato recipes simultaneously: tomato sauce and gazpacho. Of course it was an obvious way to turn almost rotting tomatoes into something edible, as Joe Hoya pointed out.

And he’s right. Gazpacho is uniformly delicious but not uniformly similar in ingredients. In fact, tomatoes aren’t even a constant in some recipes.

As I rummaged through the tomatoes I noticed that a good half were yellow and the rest were a mix of red, purple, orange and green. I reserved the yellow for the gazpacho while I used the other colors for my maroon colored sauce.

Yellow Gazpacho

Roughly chop about 3 pounds of yellow tomatoes, non-rotting parts only. Immersion blend the following: yellow tomatoes, peeled, de-seeded and sliced cucumber, chopped Hungarian Stuffing Peppers (carries a bit of heat, way more flavorful than a green bell pepper and they are in light in color to match the yellow tomatoes), oil, white wine vinegar, salt and white pepper.

Cracked black pepper, to me, is one of the most attractive finishes to a dish. But for some reason I became really interested in preserving the pale yellow color of the cold soup. Cue the white pepper.

For color, however, I sliced in half sugar baby tomatoes. At least that is what I think that variety of tomato is called: they are slightly larger than sun golds, have a red exterior with white zig zag lines on the skin.

Also for some texture there are a few croutons, half floating on the surface. I simply cubed left over bread, tossed it with kosher salt, freshly cracked pepper and oil and placed it in a 350 oven for about 20 minutes.

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

Cucumber Salad

– Many of you have opinions on the ”can you cook cucumbers?” debate. Maids:

My roommate says she used to cook burritos in her microwave in college using tortillas, rolled with cheese and cucumbers inside. Sounded disgusting to me, but she has a palate I respect so maybe cooked cukes aren’t so bad?

I don’t know about these cuke burritos, but I’m definitely going to start ranking my friends by how much I respect their palates.

JoeHoya and the Mrs. coin an amazing term for the frustration found in fava beans:

We LOVE fava beans and make it a point to buy them in bulk during their all-too-brief season at the farmers’ market. But the prep is definitely a pain in the ass. Elizabeth refers to favas as the Beans of Diminishing Returns because you buy them by weight and then promptly through out half of what you paid for in the form of the outer and inner pods.

– Finally, anyone who can get worked up about indefinite articles in convenience store advertising is welcome at ES. BigOldCar:

The thing that bothers me most about the Hoagieman commercials is that the song ends with:

“At the Hoa…gie…Fest!
At the Wawa!
The Hoa…Gie…Fest!
At the Wawa!”

Why “THE” Wawa? Why not “your,” or some other gap-filler? But the definite article doesn’t belong here, and it bugs the shit out of me!

I don’t get the Sgt. Pepper theme, but it’s so interesting-looking that I’ve come to accept it.

I cannot, however, get past that improper article.

(Photo: inSinU8)