Grape Gazpacho

Having bought grapes today at the Indian Store, we had this great idea of Cold Grape Soup. Yahoo Search showed this to be a rare concept :) But loosely inspired by this blog we went ahead and made a grape gazpacho, which has worked out really well.

Soak 3 slices of bread in water.
Take 1/2 cup of almonds (as little skin as possible) + 1 medium-sized clove of garlic - grind in food processor.
Add that to the blender with the soaked bread + some water. Blend.
Add some olive oil, coarse salt, sherry vinegar. Blend.
Add grapes in stages, blending and tasting in each step. If the soup becomes too flat because of excess grapes, add some vinegar to compensate.
Chill and serve with grapes as garnish.
Enjoy.

Gazpacho

We really liked Gazpacho in our trip to Spain, so we got a recipe book from the library. We have made it a couple of times, and it's been working out great. The parts in quotes were in the original recipe, but we modify liberally based on what's available, and it works out quite robustly.

Soak 2 cups "day-old country-bread" (sourdough works well) for 5-10 minutes, and drain. Put that plus the following list in the blender :

2 medium-sized garlic cloves.
1 pinch of cumin seeds.
Coarse salt.
3 pounds "ripest, most favorful" tomatoes
2 small "Kirby (pickling)" cucumbers
"1 large Italian (frying) pepper"
1 medium sized red bell pepper.
3 tbsp chopped red onion
1/2 cup E.V. Olive oil
1/2 cup "chilled, bottled, spring" water, or more as needed.
2 tbsp sherry vinegar.

Blend a lot till it is really smooth. Adjust the vinegar to taste. Chill and enjoy. :)

Simple Toor Dal

Boil toor dal.

Heat oil.
Put jeera.
Then rai and hing.
Then fry onion (chopped long) for a while.
Add haldi & green chili in between.
When done, add grated ginger, tomato, dal, salt, sugar.
Simmer a bit.
Garnish with Cilantro.

Voila !