I can’t believe that I’d never made—or worse, even had—gazpacho before. Well, actually, I can. I didn’t grow up eating the most exotic, or daring—or hell, even sophisticated-sounding—foods. I was 23 before I realized that a crudité is just a veggie plate and that chèvre is goat cheese. And while I’ve known that gazpacho was just pureed tomato-based soup for quite some time, I still hadn’t actually attempted to make it—until Monday, when I looked in my fridge and realized I had the basic foundation for a simple gazpacho: tomatoes, cucumbers and onions.

After glancing at a few recipes online (anyone who has read my book knows that in my life I’ve only followed one recipe from start to finish) I decided I would up the bell pepper factor—most recipes called for one green pepper, I saw that green pepper and raised it a yellow one—make it a tad spicy and try something I now like to call the half-and-half method.

The half-and-half method is, simply, halving all of your gazpacho ingredients and pureeing one half while chopping the other—both in the blender, separately—and then combining the two.

While I have very little to compare it to (remember, I’d never had gazpacho before) I’m considering it a success.

Recipe after the jump…

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Tags: bell pepper, blender, bread, butter, CSA, cucumber, garlic, gazpacho, green pepper, jalapeno pepper, lemon juice, olive oil, onion, recipes, sea salt, soup, sourdough bread, summer soup, tomatoes, yellow pepper