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Deconstructing Gazpacho
(e-SoupSong 3: July 1, 2000)
ONCE UPON A TIME, gazpacho was created--that fabulous Spanish soup of fragrant tomatoes, sweet peppers, garlic, bread, olive oil, and vinegar, all pureed and served ice cold on hot days.
§ Sancho Panza drove Don Quixote wild searching for inns that served it.§ Alice B. Toklas flipped over it in Malaga, scouring calle de las Sierpas in Seville to find a recipe for it.
§ Pedro Almodovar plotted a movie around a batch of it whipped up with barbituates.
§ The British group Marillion wrote a song about it: "Did you carry out those threats I heard, Or where you only playing macho? And the stains on her Versace scarf, were they really just Gazpacho?"
§ Actress Winona Ryder, age 12, was "discovered" by a casting director while eating it in a local restaurant.
§ Both Al Gore and George "Dubya" Bush have served it at fundraisers this year.
§ And Prince Charles made it and served it in paper cups last month at the historic royal b-b-q at which he finally introduced Camilla Parker Bowles to Mom, the Queen. Her response? "Is this to be the new Windsor Soup?"
THE QUESTION IS: WHAT’S IT MEAN? AND HOW’D IT COME TO BE?
What’s it mean? No one knows for sure, but one theory says "gazpacho" is a combination of "caspa" (a pre-Roman word meaning "bits and pieces") and "-acho" (a sneering diminutive meant to identify it as a dish that only the poor and desperate would eat).
Fact is, it was introduced into Andalusian Spain by the Moors sometime after 800 AD--made up of bread, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, salt, and water, all packed into unglazed earthenware pots to keep it cool. On a good day, it might include almonds and almond milk. Anyway it was white; it was thick; it filled the belly and cooled the brow of laborers during the heat of the day. It was this gazpacho that Sancho Panza knew and loved, saying at the end of his days as governor, "A Spade does better in my Hand that a Governor’s Truncheon; and I had rather fill my Belly with Gazpacho, than lie at the Mercy of a Coxcombly Physick-monger that starves me to Death."
Why vinegar, when the Moors lived and breathed lemons? Clearly a cultural tip of the hat to Roman food traditions--because those Romans, who occupied all of Spain by the time Augustus came to power in 27 BCE and didn’t leave for hundreds of years, simply adored their vinegar, especially from the wine they made from Spanish grapes.
Why no tomatoes? Why no peppers? They were still in the New World, patiently waiting to be discovered by early Spanish explorers. Even so—and even though Spain embraced these New World foods before the rest of Europe--it was a long time before they found their way into the gazpacho pot. Juan de la Mata’s recipe for gazpacho in his 1747 cookbook Arte de reposteria did not include tomatoes or peppers.
So let’s take a look at how today's gazpacho turns out to be a lesson in international culture in a cold bowl.
DECONSTRUCTING GAZPACHO
I’m going to use the excellent and authentic recipe of José Luis Vivas, a native of Seville currently serving as a conference interpreter in Brussels, who has guided me well into the world of Spanish soups. His classic Andalusian Gazpacho recipe is a perfect marriage of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, garlic, bread, olive oil, vinegar, and salt—but just consider how far the ingredients traveled before they became Spanish natives.
Tomatoes, for example, began life in the Andes mountains of South America, were domesticated in Mexico by the Aztecs, and were brought to Seville by explorers around 1523. They weren’t an instant hit. They were used in a few recipes by 1745, but didn’t get chopped into gazpacho til later. Why such a slow start? Everyone thought they were poisonous. After all, they’re cousins to the deadly nightshade family.
Cucumbers likely originated in southern India; traveled to the Mideast, where they were spoken of longingly by Israelites who missed them when left Egypt to wander in the desert for 40 years (Numbers 11:5); thence to Rome, where they were cultivated out of season for Emperor Tiberias; and so to Spain with conquering Roman soldiers.
Peppers were almost immediately snapped up in the New World by Christopher Columbus, who was so desperately seeking spices. All capsicum peppers originated in South America--some in Andes regions, some in Amazonia, some in Peru and Bolivia, some in Mexico (where seeds from 7000 BCE have been found). Then it was easy enough for birds to distribute the seeds through their digestive tracts while flitting around the Caribbean--where Columbus then found them. He ran straight back to Spain with them in 1493--and (their association with the nightshade family notwithstanding) everyone everywhere adored them. By the end of the 16th century, they’d gone native in every nation’s cuisine but Australia and Polynesia.
Garlic was born in Central Asia and radiated out in all directions—east to ancient China; west to ancient Egypt (ditto on the Israelites missing that good food), to ancient Greece, to classical Rome, and off to Spain with Roman cooks for those same Roman soldiers. Garlic, they believed, would make them strong and heroic. Not that it did much good in 405 AD against Gunderic and the Vandals.
Olive Oil, ahhhh. Venerated from earliest times, associated with peace and sacred rituals, olives began life in the Mideast--perhaps Turkey--and were gathered in the wild by Neolithic people some 10 thousand years ago. The tree was domesticated before 3000 BCE in Palestine, and its cultivation spread to Crete, ancient Greece, classical Rome, and thence, again with those agreeable Roman soldiers, to France and Spain. Olives were really really happy in Spain, and still are. Andalusia is today’s main olive-oil producing region in the world.
The upshot? Consider that when you dip into that cool, refreshing bowl of gazpacho--which is so distinctly, so ineffably, so exquisitely Spanish--it never could have been without the unfolding drama of a 5-way relay race over thousands and thousands of years. Certain plants began to grow in India...Peru...Central Asia...Mexico...Turkey. They produced seeds, and these seeds passed from hand to hand, from place to place, carried on the backs of Indians, Asian and Arab traders, Roman soldiers, and European explorers--all unknowingly, DESTINATION SPAIN. Only then--and just a couple hundred years ago--was this marvelous Spanish soup created.
21ST CENTURY GAZPACHO: "POTENTIAL HOMEMADE CHEMICAL WEAPON"?
Yes, and in my own home town. When protesters flocked to Washington, DC, this past April to stage demonstrations at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, they gathered at the Florida Avenue Convergence Center as a staging area. Police in riot gear were attentive, watchful, concerned. Then, first thing in the morning on April 15, they roused some 300 sleepy activists from the building and sealed it off. HAH! Just as they suspected: In the kitchen they found chili, onions, garlic, and gazpacho, citing them as "potential homemade chemical weapons." Two people were arrested.
"What are they going to charge them with?" quipped local lawyer Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, "Unlawful possession of gazpacho?"
Best regards, Pat Solley