We are really, really into gazpacho. It's delicious, stupid healthy, easily vegetarian and vegan, close to paleo, and doesn't involve turning on a single heat-generating appliance. For the win.

I am a big fan of Alton Brown's gazpacho recipe. But it's 2 hours and 45 minutes from start to finish, which includes 45 minutes prep time. So I've been experimenting. Our changes are pretty much just cheating - by skipping steps, including the seeding and peeling of the fresh tomatoes, switching up some measurements to avoid actually measuring, and using some canned tomatoes, which makes more sense to me than Alton's suggestion to buy tomato juice and use only a little of it.

Alton is a scientist and a perfectionist, and his food is amazing. We don’t have time for that around here. This fairly quick and easy gazpacho is delightful. I've made both the cheater and non-cheater version in the past week, and, to our untrained palates at least, there was no noticeable difference.

Delightful Gazpacho (Recipe adapted from Alton Brown's at Food Network)

About an hour, start to finish

Serves 3-4

3-4 tomatoes, cored and halved
1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes
1 med cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 bell pepper, any color, chopped
1 med onion, chopped (I’ve also made this with half a small onion and 4-5 scallions, white parts only, chopped. Delicious)
1 large garlic clove
1/2 jalapeno, seeded
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 lime or lemon, juiced
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce or Tamari soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt
several grinds black pepper
Chopped scallions, cilantro and/or sour cream or crema for garnish

1. In a large bowl, mix together everything except your jalapeno, garlic and fresh tomatoes.

2. Put your fresh tomato halves (skins, seeds and all, just no cores) in a blender, along with your garlic clove and half jalapeno. Puree for about 10 seconds, or until smooth. This eliminates the need to chop the hot pepper or garlic, and prevents large chunks of either in your soup. Add the blended stuff to the rest of your ingredients in your bowl and stir to combine.

3. Transfer about half of your mixture (but more or less, depending on how chunky you want your gazpacho) back to your blender. Blend until juicified and smooth – about 15-20 seconds.

4. Return this back to your bowl (or, if you decide you want your whole soup pureed, put this in a new bowl and, working in batches, puree the rest) and taste for salt and pepper.

5. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Longer – more like 2 hours – is ideal, but hey, sometimes you don’t have time. If you’re making chimichurri avocado toast, you can whip that up while the gazpacho is in the fridge, and do the dishes and set the table, and then you’re all set for dinner. If you actually have more time the night before or morning of, all the better. It won't hurt to sit overnight.

And what does one serve with Gazpacho? Chimichurri Avocado Toast of course.

{C}I came across Allie at the Nutritional Epiphany's recipe for chimichurri avocado toasts and knew it was the perfect thing to accompany gazpacho. Still light, but the avocado gives it some heartiness, and the flavor combo is perfect.

Chimichurri Avocado Toasts (recipe adapted from the Nutritional Epiphany).

Ingredients (serves 3-4)

2 ripe avocados, cubed
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
The juice of one lime (about 2 tablespoons)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 cup chopped cilantro (original recipe calls for parsley & cilantro, which I’m sure is delicious, but we love it with just cilantro).
Pinch each of kosher salt, ground pepper, red pepper flakes
4-5 slices of toasted bread; we use sourdough

Directions

Combine the vinegar, lime juice, olive oil, garlic, oregano, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. I combined right in my measuring cup, and then poured over the avocado cubes. Let the avocado sit in there for a minute while you toast your bread. Any kind of toasting or grilling situation will work. I just used my regular toaster, and I did not oil the bread because I figured there was enough oil in the chimichurri.

Toss your marinated avocado with your fresh herbs, and top your toast. Especially yummy served alongside gazpacho.

As a meal, these two are more than company-ready. But we also treat both as a quick family dinner, because we think both are pretty flexible. We'll sub in whatever vinegars we have for the gazpacho, (though I don't know if I'd put balsamic in the chimichurri) use Worcestershire or Tamari depending on whether we need it to be vegetarian, and use whatever leftover vegetables we've got. That's how we got to the half white onion/half scallion situation, and it was really good. All this to say, though I think it's perceived as fancy, gazpacho is really just some tomatoes in a blender. Try it for dinner!