Stuff I Bought on Amazon.com from January 1, 2011 to January 11, 2012

How to make Gazpacho

 

From Betty Wason's cookbook The Art of Spanish Cooking, first published in 1963.

Almost overnight gazpacho, the salad-soup of Spain, has become an American food fashion.  Yet whether gazpacho is really a soup at all is open to question.  And in the southern provinces of Spain itself this wonderfully refreshing summer iced soup was scarcely known until recent years.

Gazpacho had its international following long ago, however.  When thumbing through a copy of Mrs. Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife, one of the first American cookbooks, published originally in 1824, I came across a recipe for Spanish gazpacho made much as we make it today.  And in 1840, the French writer Theophile Gautier wrote about having gazpacho during a trip through southern Spain.  He asserted it would "have made the hair of Brillat-Savarin stand on end," though he concluded, "Strange as it may seem the first time one tastes it, one ends by getting used to it and even liking it."

Like most very old dishes, gazpacho recipes are multitudinous and each one different.

The peasant way of making gazpacho, everyone seems to agree, is to mash the tomatoes and other ingredients patiently and tirelessly in a huge wooden bowl, using a wooden pestle.  This, for example, is a peasant recipe for gazpacho sevillano:

     "You must have a large wooden bowl, made from the trunk of a tree, gently hollowed in the center.  In this bowl place some salt, quite a lot of garlic, and a little green pepper.  With a pestle, pound thoroughly until the mixture is a smooth paste.  Then add stale bread which has been grated iunto crumbs---the bread should be five or six days old.  Pound the crumbs gradually into the vegetable mixture until again you have a smooth paste.  Then you begin adding nice ripe tomatoes which have been peeled and seeded, and continue pounding and mashing until the mixrure is thin, without any lumps.  To this you add the yolk of a hard-cokked egg, blend thoroughly, and strir in olive oil---plenty of olive oil.  Finally you add a little vinegar and enough water to make it the right consistency."

In Jerez, Anne Williams de Domecq (whose husband is director of the Williams and Humbert bodegas) told me that gazpacho andaluz should always be made with sherry vinegar.  Jean Dalrymple of the New York City Center, who spent some twenty summers in the Valencia area of Spain when Jose Iturbi was one of her clients, learned to make a gazpacho valenciana from Senora Iturbi.  Her version, Miss Dalrymnple says, always included a pinch of cumin---a most important addition---along wth garlic, fresh tomatoes, olive oil, and vinegar, and croutons of bread fried in olive oil served over the top as garnish.

In old cookbooks I found other gazpacho recipes which called for such diverse ingredients as toasted almonds, black and/or green olives, chicken broth instead of water, and even red wine.  Minced cucumber or onions are very often served floating over the top.  Pimientos or paprika in large amounts very frequently will be added.  Sometimes other vegetables are pureed along with the tomatoes.  There was even in one Spanish book a recipe for "gazpacho colorado" (literally red gazpacho), which turned out to be thick hot puree served with big chunhks of bread.

In all these different versions, four ingredients appear without fail:  tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and vinegar.  The tomatoes must be fresh and sweet, preferably picked from the vine while still warm with the sun and rushed to the kitchen to be scalded, skins peeled off and the seeds extacted at once.  In order to make a perfect gazpacho, the tomato seeds should be removed., for these do add a certain bitterness if left in.  After the tomatoes have been pureed, they can be forced through a sieve to get rid of the seeds.  For those who do not have kitchen gardens, or who wish to make gazpacho before the local tomato season has reached its peak, it is best to use canned tomatoes, preferably the Italian pomodoro variety, or a very fine quality tomato puree.

The olive oil, of course, must be the very best.  The amount of garlic used depends on personal tatse and in general I would advise using less than Spanish cooks call for.

The elimination of bread from gazpacho takes it completely out of the peasant class, where it originated.  The following version of this cold Spanish soup is made with an electric blender.  I learned that even in Spain today those who have electric mixers or blenders make gazpacho this quicker, easier way.

GAZPACHO ANDALUZ

8 large ripe tomatoes, peeled and seeded, or large can (1 pound 12 ounces) best quality peeled tomatoes

2 or 3 garlic cloves,  minced

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon paprika

1 teaspoon sugar

1 cucumber, peeled and chopped

Dash of cayenne or Tabasco

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon vinegar

3 cups clear chicken broth

6 scallions, chopped

1/2 green pepper, minced

Mash garlic cloves. blend with salt, paprika and sugar; combine with cucumber, tomatoes, cayenne, olive oil, and vinegar.  Beat in blender until smooth and thick.  Chill thoroughly.  When ready to serve, combine with chicken broth.  Garnish with minced scallions and green pepper.  Serve an ice cube in each soup plate.  Chopped pitted black olives may also be served as garnish if desired.

How to make love, by William Shakespeare

Venus and Adonis

Page 03

'Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie;           151
These forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me;
Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky,
From morn till night, even where I list to sport me:
  Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be
  That thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee?       156

'Is thine own heart to shine own face affected?
Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?
Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected,
Steal thine own freedom, and complain on theft.      160
  Narcissus so himself himself forsook,
  And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.

'Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,
Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,         164
Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;
Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse:
  Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty;
  Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty.            168

'Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed,
Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?
By law of nature thou art bound to breed,
That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;      172
  And so in spite of death thou dost survive,
  In that thy likeness still is left alive.'

By this the love-sick queen began to sweat,
For where they lay the shadow had forsook them,      176
And Titan, tired in the mid-day heat
With burning eye did hotly overlook them,
  Wishing Adonis had his team to guide,
  So he were like him and by Venus' side.            180

And now Adonis with a lazy spright,
And with a heavy, dark, disliking eye,
His louring brows o'erwhelming his fair sight,
Like misty vapours when they blot the sky,           184
  Souring his cheeks, cries, 'Fie! no more of love:
  The sun doth burn my face; I must remove.'

'Ay me,' quoth Venus, 'young, and so unkind!
What bare excuses mak'st thou to be gone!            188
I'll sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind
Shall cool the heat of this descending sun:
  I'll make a shadow for thee of my hairs;           191
  If they burn too, I'll quench them with my tears.

'The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm,
And lo! I lie between that sun and thee:
The heat I have from thence doth little harm,
Thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me;      196
  And were I not immortal, life were done
  Between this heavenly and earthly sun.

'Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel?
Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth:   200
Art thou a woman's son, and canst not feel
What 'tis to love? how want of love tormenteth?
  O! had thy mother borne so hard a mind,            203
  She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind.

'What am I that thou shouldst contemn me this?
Or what great danger dwells upon my suit?
What were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss?
  Speak, fair; but speak fair words, or else be mute:
  Give me one kiss, I'll give it thee again,         209
And one for interest if thou wilt have twain.

'Fie! lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone,
Well-painted idol, image dull and dead,              212
Statue contenting but the eye alone,
Thing like a man, but of no woman bred:
  Thou art no man, though of a man's complexion,
  For men will kiss even by their own direction.'    216

This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue,
And swelling passion doth provoke a pause;
Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong;
Being judge in love, she cannot right her cause:     220
  And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak,
  And now her sobs do her intendments break.

Sometimes she shakes her head, and then his hand;
Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground;            224
Sometimes her arms infold him like a band:
She would, he will not in her arms be bound;
  And when from thence he struggles to be gone,
  She locks her lily fingers one in one.             228

'Fondling,' she saith, 'since I have hemm'd thee here
Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:        232
  Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
  Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

New Year's Resolution

Excerpted from the short story New Year's Resolution by Lydia Davis.  From The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

My New Year’s Resolution is to learn to see myself as nothing.... at last, halfway through your life, you are smart enough to see that it all amounts to nothing, even success amounts to nothing. But how does a person learn to see herself as nothing when she has already had so much trouble learning to see herself as, something in the first place? It’s so confusing. You spend the first half of your life learning that you are something after all, now you have to spend the second half learning to see yourself as nothing. You have been a negative nothing, now you want to be a positive nothing. I have begun trying, in these first days of the New Year, bur so far it’s pretty difficult. I’m pretty close to nothing all morning, but by late afternoon what is in me that is something starts throwing its weight around. This happens many days. By evening, I’m full of something and it’s often something nasty and pushy. So what I think at this point is that I’m aiming too high, that maybe nothing is too much, to begin with. Maybe for now I should just try, each day, to be a little less than I usually am.

What I Feel, a short story by Lydia Davis

WHAT I FEEL

These days I try to tell myself that what I feel is not very important. I've read this in several books now: that what I feel is important but not the center of everything. Maybe I do believe this, but not enough to act on it. I would like to believe it more deeply.
      What a relief that would be. I wouldn't have to think about what I felt all the time, and try to control it, with all its complications and all its consequences. I wouldn't have to try to feel better all the time. In fact, if I didn't believe what I felt was so important, I probably wouldn't even feel so bad, and it wouldn't be so hard to feel better. I wouldn't have to say, Oh I feel so awful, this is like the end for me here, in this dark living-room late at night, with the dark street outside under the streetlamps, I am so very alone, everyone else in the house asleep, there is no comfort anywhere, just me alone down here, I will never calm myself enough to sleep, never sleep, never be able to go on to the next day, I can't possibly go on, I can't live, even through the next minute.
      If I didn't believe what I felt was the center of everything, then it wouldn't be the center of everything, but just something off to the side, one of many things, and I would be able to see and pay attention to those other things that are equally important, and in this way I would have some relief.
      But it is curious how you can believe an idea is absolutely true and correct and yet not believe it deeply enough to act on it. So I still act as though my feelings were the center of everything, and they still cause me to end up alone by the living-room window late at night. What is different now is that I have this idea: I have the idea that soon I will no longer believe that my feelings are the center of everything. This is a comfort to me, because if you despair of going on, but at the same time tell yourself that what you feel may not be very important, then either you may no longer despair of going on, or you may still despair of going on but not quite believe it anymore.


From Conjunctions:21 Fall 1993

This story is also included in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis