Avocado Gazpacho

J: So, I don’t remember if I have expressed my feelings on avocados on this blog yet.  Here they are: I LOVE AVOCADOS.  They are one of my favorite foods.  I regularly used to have just an avocado, maybe with some cottage cheese or something, for a light lunch or dinner.  I would eat them every day if I could.  And so, a few weeks ago, while it was still in the 70s (ridiculous!), when Erik and I were trying to come up with an interesting soup to make, I thought of this: avocado gazpacho.  The recipe we came up with was, I think, not the best one; it was fine the first night, but the longer it was in the fridge (read: by the second night) it had a bit of a funny taste to it.  We’re both pretty sure that was the fault of the cucumber.  Simple fix: don’t add cucumber.  Otherwise, this soup was rather delightful: creamy, cool, and refreshing.

I’m including here the original recipe we used, as well as an alternative suggestion we came up with after the fact: guacamole soup!  As always, feel free to add your own twist to this recipe, and let us know what you find works best for you — we want to improve on this, and welcome any suggestions.

Avocado Gazpacho
This is what we used:
2 ripe avocados
1 onion
1 green bell pepper
1 cucumber
Salt, black pepper, to taste
Vegetable stock or water (you’ll need this because blending everything together creates more of a mousse than a soup)
Ricotta cheese, to taste/textural preference

Alternative suggestion: Guacamole soup
2 ripe avocados
1 onion
1 large tomato or 2 smallish tomatoes
Cilantro, salt, black pepper, to taste
Vegetable stock or water
Optional: Ricotta cheese to blend in, other cheese (cheddar? pepperjack?) for topping

This is really a pretty straightforward soup.  In fact, a lot of soups are really pretty straightforward, which might be why we like making them so much.  Combine ingredients; blend.  Ta-da!

…I suppose you want pictures and some semblance of a recipe, though.  Okay, here we go.  Chop up all your vegetables.  I’d recommend a relatively fine dice, but since these are all getting blended anyway, you don’t have to make them perfect by any stretch.  We sautéed the onion and pepper a bit, to soften their sharpness, and I’d recommend doing the same — but if you love raw onion, you certainly don’t have to do this.

Attack your avocado and cucumber in a similar fashion, and add those to the veggie bowl.

We realized, too late, that this bowl was inadequately-sized for blending.  If you have better foresight than we did, you will have used a larger bowl in the first place.  If not, at this point in the process, transfer your mass of green vegetables into a very large bowl, and place this in the sink or bathtub or some other splatter-resistant area.  Prepare for blending: this may include donning safety goggles, and should certainly involve an apron.

Blend the soup most of the way.  At this point, begin adding small amounts of stock/water and ricotta.  The liquid will thin out the vegetables (without it, this is really not soup-like at all), and the ricotta will add a lovely creaminess to it.

Continue doing this until you’ve reached your desired thinness/creaminess.  Ideally, at this point you would be able to chill the soup in the fridge for a couple hours — it is gazpacho, after all.  But, if not, it’s probably serve-able as is.  If you like, add a cannelle of ricotta to the top, or grate some other cheese into the soup.  Enjoy!

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