Hey everyone, it’s Jen (The Pampered Wife) getting to blog again.  Thomas had to do all the yardwork today so I thought what better way to reward him than cooking dinner for The Cooking Husband for a change.  I decided to make Gazpacho, which I haven’t made in years, and it really turned out well.  As a twist, I added shrimp and made jalapeno cornbread to go with it.  Thomas absolutely loved it, and said this meal is in his top 5 favorites of meals I’ve made, so I will take that as a compliment and promise to make it for him again.  The best part about Gazpacho is that it is a soup that is really good for you, and doesn’t have a lot of fat–it’s essentially like eating salsa as a soup…but so much better.  Oh, and for those of you who didn’t know, this soup is served chilled, so it is very refreshing in the summer.

In the immortal words of The Cooking Husband…Let’s get to cooking!

Gazpacho

6 Roma tomatoes, diced

2-4 scallions, diced (we had a big scallions so I didn’t need to use as many)

1/2 green pepper, diced

1/2 red pepper, diced

1 medium to large cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced

1 teaspoon olive oil

3/4 teaspoon prepared horseradish

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/8 teaspoon or a few small sprigs of thyme, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, minced through garlic press

Salt and pepper to taste

Sour cream and avocado for garnish if you choose

Start by chopping all of your veggies for the soup.  Trust me, this takes a while.  I started with the scallions.

Next, I peeled and halved the cucumbers to make it easier to seed them.  They should look like this when you are done.

Next, dice the cucumbers into small cubes.

Next come the red and green peppers.  I prefer to use about half of each pepper so that they do not overpower the soup, but if you like lots of bell pepper flavor, feel free to use more.

After that, time to tackle the jalapeno and garlic.  I chose to take all of the seeds out of the jalapeno, but you can control the amount of heat you want in your soup.  Remember for jalapenos, a majority of the heat comes from the seeds and the inner membrane of the pepper, so if you like it really spicy, feel free to leave in the seeds.  For the garlic, just put it in the press and combine in the same bowl as the diced jalapenos.

Finally, time for the tomatoes.  I like the Roma tomatoes a lot as it is easier for me to dice these up and not have the pieces come out too big.  Whew…it still took a little bit of time to slice up all 6.

Now that you have all of the intensive prep work done, time to make the shrimp.  I purposefully left this as an additional topic as the gazpacho is still really good without it, for those out there with a shellfish allergy, but it definitely adds a little something extra.

Sauteed Shrimp

15-25 medium shrimp, shelled and devained without tails

Lemon juice to taste

White wine to taste

1 Tablespoon of butter

Salt and pepper to taste.

Start by heating the butter in your pan, and once it is melted, add the shrimp.  Go ahead and add the lemon juice and wine as well as the salt and pepper.  Let everything cook until the shrimp is pink and opaque throughout.  The lemon juice and wine is to your taste.  I probably added about 1 1/2 Tablespoon of lemon juice and about a Tablespoon of wine.

While the shrimp are cooking away, let’s go ahead and get started on the cornbread.  Once the shrimp achieve the proper color and consistency, remove from the heat and set to the side.

Jalapeno Cornbread

1 package Cornbread mix

1/3 cup of milk

1 egg

2 Tablespoons of butter, melted

1 jalapeno, diced

Unlike The Cooking Husband who has my Nan’s super secret from scratch Jalapeno Cornbread recipe, I’m not too proud to use the cornbread mix for something that isn’t the star of the show.  Per the package, add the cornbread mix, milk, egg, and melted butter to a bowl and mix until just combined.  I added the jalapenos at this time.

Grease a cake pan with cooking spray, and then pour the batter in.  Put in the oven at 400 degrees and cook for 16-18 minutes until golden brown.

Now, it is finally time to finish the soup and put everything together.  Take all of the tomatoes, jalapenos, garlic and thyme, and half of the cucumbers, scallions, green and red peppers and add them into the blender together.  Once you get everything in there, add the oil, chili powder, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper and I also added a little celery salt to ours to give it a little extra something.  Blend until almost smooth, so there are no noticeable chunks.  (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of this step).  Now, you will take the other half of the scallions, cucumbers, and bell peppers and add the shrimp to the mixture.  I cut the shrimp into quarters so that everything was roughly the same size.

Once you have this mixture combined, you will add half of what is in the bowl to the mixture from the blender, and save the rest to add as a garnish on the top.  Here’s a picture of how the final plating looked.

And a closeup of the mixture on top

Gazpacho is a great summer soup, especially on a hot day, since it is served cold.  Best part is that the soup ALWAYS tastes better the second day, and since we had a little leftover, this is what Thomas will be eating for lunch tomorrow.  The Cooking Husband will be back to posting tomorrow.  Please try this recipe and let me know how you like it–you will be glad you did!

Happy Cooking!