Click HERE to register your comments.

Or do you want to take another look at the homepage MENU?

Or do you want to SEARCH for something specific?

Here is, verbatim, a chapter entitled "Beautiful Soup" from The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, published in 1954. This thoughtful cook; San Francisco-born and habitue of Paris; shy and gutsy person; lover and companion of Gertrude Stein--she speaks volumes about the life and times of nations, as manifested in their evolving cuisines. She may not be completely right, but her sincerity and deep insight ring like a bell.

As an interesting addendum, Seville native José Luis Vivas has written to say that the calle de las Sierpes mentioned by Ms. Toklas has not changed much in 70 years...but the bookshop where she bought her cookbook finally went out of business last year, in 1998. In addition, Mr. Vivas glosses Ms. Toklas' misinterpretation of peasants travelling and preparing a rustic gazpacho--thinking that they "cook" it somehow by covering it with a damp cloth and leaving it in the sun. In fact, they are cooling it, thanks to the heat absorption caused by the evaporation of water. That principle has been used from time immemorial in hot Mediterranean areas by using unglazed earthenware vessels. Their high porosity allows the water they hold to ooze outwards, becoming immediately vapourized by the sun and cooling the remaining liquid. [In archeologic excavations, Mr. Vivas notes, you can very easily tell which vessels held water and which held wine or oil, as the latter two are always glazed on the inside--not on the outside in case you had to cool them!).

After the first ineffable gazpacho was served to us in Malaga and an entirely different but equally exquisite one was presented in Seville the recipes for them had unquestionably become of greater importance than Grecos and Zurbarans, than cathedrals and museums. Surely the calle de las Sierpes, the liveliest, most seductive of streets, would produce the cook-book that would answer the burning consuming question of how to prepare a gazpacho. Down the narrow Sierpes where only pedestrians are permitted to pass, with its de luxe shops of fans, boots and gloves, toys and sweets, its smart men's clubs on either side whose members sit three tables deep sipping iced drinks and evaluating the young ladies who pass, at the end of the street was the large book shop remembered from a previous visit forty years before. Cook-books without number, exactly eleven, were offered for inspections but not a gazpacho in any index. Oh, said the clerk, gazpachos are only eaten in Spain by peasants and Americans. Choosing the book that seemed to have the fewest French recipes, I hurried back to Zurbaran and Greco, to museums and cathedrals.

At Cordoba there was another and suaver gazpacho, at Segovia one with a more vulgar appeal, outrageously coarse. There was nothing to do but to resign oneself to an experimental laboratory effort as soon as a kitchen was available.

Upon the return from Spain, my host at Cannes, a distinguished Polish-American composer, a fine gourmet and experienced cook, listened to the story of the futile chase for gazpacho recipes, for their possible ingredients.

Ah, said he, but you are describing a chlodnik, the Polish iced soup. Before he had time to prepare it for us a Turkish guest arrived and he hearing about the gazpachos and the chlodnik said, You are describing a Turkish cacik.

Perhaps, said I. It was confusing. He said he would prepare a cacik for us. It was to be sure an iced soup, but the Turk had not the temperament of a great cook, he should not have accepted olive oil as a substitute for the blander oil of sesame.

then we had the chlodnik, a really great dish worthy of its Spanish cousins. But that was not the end.

There was the Greek tarata. Yes indeed, it was confusing, until one morning it occurred to me that it was evident each one of these frozen soups was not a separate creation. Had the Poles passed the recipe to their enemy the Turks at the siege of Vienna or had it been brought back to Poland much earlier than that from Turkey or Greece? Or had it been brought back by a crusader from Turkey? Had it gone to Sicily from Greece and then to Spain? It is a subject to be pursued. Well, here are the seven Mediterranean soups.

GAZPACHO OF MALAGA (Spanish)

• 4 cups veal broth cooked with 2 cloves garlic and a large Spanish onion.
• 1 large tomato, peeled, with its seeds removed, and cut in minute cubes.
• 1 small cucumber, peeled, with its seeds removed, and cut in minute cubes.
• 1/2 sweet red pepper, skin and seed removed, cut in minute cubes.
• 4 Tablespoons cooked rice.
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil.

GAZPACHO OF SEVILLE

In a bowl put 4 crushed cloves of garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon powdered Spanish pepper, and the pulp of 2 medium-sized tomatoes, crushed.

Mix these ingredients thoroughly and add drop by drop 4 Tablespoons olive oil. Add 1 Spanish onion cut in tissue-paper-thin slices; 1 sweet red or green pepper, seeds removed and cut in minute cubes; 1 cucumber; and 4 Tablespoons fresh white breadcrumbs.

Add 3 cups water, mix thoroughly. Serve ice-cold.

GAZPACHO OF CORDOBA

• 2 cloves of crushed garlic
• 2 cucumber
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2 teaspoons cornflour
• 1 teaspoon salt

GAZPACHO OF SEGOVIA

• 4 cloves garlic, pressed.
• 1 teaspoon ground Spanish pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin powder.
• 2 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil or 3/4 Tablespoon powdered basil
• 4 Tablespoons olive oil.
• 1 Spanish onion cut in minute cubes.
• 2 tomatoes peeled, seeds removed and cut in minute cubes.
• 2 cucumbers peeled, seeds removed and cut in minute cubes.
• 1 red sweet pepper, seeds removed and cut in minute cubes.
• 2 Tablespoons fresh white breadcrumbs.
• 4 cups water.

CHLODNIK (Polish)

• 2 ounces lean veal cut in small pieces cooked in water to cover.
• 2 ounces beets cooked until tender and crushed through a sieve. Keep the water in which they were cooked.
• 1 teaspoon chives cut in very small lengths.
• 1 teaspoon powdered dill.
• 10 prawns, can be replaced by 16 large shrimps.
• 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 cucumber peeled, seeds removed and very thinly sliced.
• 2 cups sour heavy cream.
• 6 hard-boiled eggs sliced.

CACIK (Turkish)

• 6 cucumbers peeled, seeds removed and cut in slices.
• 6 cups heavy yoghourt.
• 1 teaspoon salt.
• 6 Tablespoons oil of sesame, a bland oil may be substituted.

TARATA (Greek)

• 3 green peppers, skinned and seeds removed.
• 6 egg plants, skinned and seeds removed.

After this chapter was completed further news of gazpacho came from Santiago de Chile in South America. did the conquistadores take the recipe, along with their horses, to the New World? Senora Marta Brunet, a distinguished Chilean writer, is of Spanish or rather Catalan descent and she describes gazpacho as a meal of the Spanish muleteers. And meal it seems, in this version, rather than soup.

These muleteers, she says, carry with them on their journeyings a flat earthenware dish--and garlic, olive oil, tomatoes and cucumbers, also dry bread which they crumble. Between two stones by the wayside they grind the garlic with a little salt and then add the oil. This mixture is rubbed all round the inside of the earthenware vessel. Then they slice the tomatoes and cucumbers and put alternating layers of each in the dish, interspersing the layers with layers of breadcrumbs and topping off the four tiers with more breadcrumbs and more oil. This done and prepared, they take a wet cloth, wrap it round the dish and leave it in a sunny place. The evaporation cooks the contents and when the cloth is dry the meal is ready. Too simple, my dear Watson.