Fruity Gazpacho

Two recipes today, both really show off summer's best fruits! First up is an unusual savory-sweet soup I call "Fruity Gazpacho" that's good as an appetizer, an entrée, or truly, even a dessert. Fruity Gazpacho mixes healthy summer fruits and vegetables and is positively fresh and delicious. Make sure to make room in your fridge for a batch this summer! Next up is a light and summery fruit salad, sweetened with no more than a little sugar and fresh mint.

An Unusual Chilled Summer Soup, Both Sweet & Savory. Weight Watchers Friendly. Vegan. Whole30. Naturally Gluten Free.

~ Skip Straight to the Recipes ~

~ Fruity Gazpacho ~
~ Summer Fruit Salad ~

BEST RECIPES!

• Fruity Gazpacho Made the List!
• Best Recipes of 2006

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How I Became a Seasonal Cook, Way Back When.

Blame the gazpacho.

Yes, it was a bowl of tomato-y, onion-y, pepper-y soup that heaved my culinary style into the camp called seasonal fare.

Setting: A basement meeting room in a downtown hotel in Kansas City.

Time: November, not the unseasonably warm and sunny golden days that Missourians love but an unseasonably wet and bone-chilling day that Missourians dread.

By noon, the group was shivering and starved, happy to move just to generate heat, better yet to hunt up lunch in the next room.

Waiting there were big bowls of soup. “Ohhhh,” we thought. “Something warm!” But instead the soup was cold, spicy gazpacho, a summer specialty. Not a spoonful was eaten.

So make it hot soup in November.

But on a steamy summer day, cold soup is refreshing and soothing. Fruity Gazpacho is a new-this-summer favorite shared by a Webster Groves reader who reports that her young sons eat it up.

It’s savory enough for a starter, hearty enough for a main dish and sweet enough for a dessert – really!

So Many Ways to Make Gazpacho!
But Only When It's Hot-Hot-Hot, Okay?

The most authentic Spanish gazpacho is made with tomatoes and other fresh, ripe summer vegetables. I promise myself a giant batch of Tomato Gazpacho every year, it's one of A Veggie Venture's top summer recipes!

But apparently I also love the fruit 'n' veggie combination gazpachos since over the years, I have collected three recipes!

• Fruity Gazpacho (recipe below), my first recipe, that rich green color is so captivating!
• Cantaloupe-Tomato Gazpacho, more lovely color plus quick to the table
• Tomato & Sour Cherry Gazpacho, another unexpected combination

Fruity Gazpacho: An Unusual Summer Treat.

So we all know what grapes taste like. And honeydew. And cucumber. And green pepper.

But who can imagine what they taste like together?

How about this? Tart. Sweet. Grassy. With a touch of Bitter.

Now add some creaminess, that's the avocado. And some heat, the jalapeño. And finally, some brightness and vibrancy, that's the lime juice.

Now imagine it chilled, with great texture from the puréed fruits and vegetables.

That's Fruity Gazpacho. Such famliiar ingredients in such an unusual and unexpected combination.

Summer Fruit Salad with Fresh Mint

At its peak, summer fruit requires no adornment. Summer Fruit Salad is sweetened with no more than a little sugar and fresh mint. It's a simple combination, really just nudging you to mix summer fruit with sugar and fresh mint, ground together. So good! Here's the info, not a recipe per se, just an idea to make your own, Summer Fruit Salad.

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READER RECIPE: FRUITY GAZPACHO

A starter, entrée or … dessert!

Hands-on time: 20 minutes
Makes 5 cups

GAZPACHO
• 1/2 a honeydew melon, skin washed well before cutting, skin sliced off, melon cut into large pieces
• 2 cups green grapes
• 1/2 a cucumber, preferably English, peeled and seeded if not
• 1/2 a green pepper
• 1/2 an avocado
• 1 jalapeño, seeds & membrane removed
• Zest & juice (about 1 tablespoon) of a lime
• 2 tablespoons Italian parsley

GARNISH
• Quartered grapes and diced cucumber, pepper and avocado or lime slices, optional

Mix all the ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to serve.

ALANNA's TIPS Fruity Gazpacho holds its taste and color in the fridge for several days so don’t hesitate to make two batches one after the other to use up the cucumber, pepper and avocado. But a double batch is too big for even my large food processor. If you’re watching calories closely, the avocado creates a creamier texture but isn’t essential. I've learned the hard way to pull out the food processor: my low-power blender doesn't have enough power to blend this mixture. It might do better if the melon and vegetables were cut into small pieces.

NUTRITION INFORMATION Per Cup (Freestyle assumes chopped up like a fruit salad, see Make It Freestyle Friendly below): 102 Calories; 2g Tot Fat; 0g Sat Fat; 0mg Cholesterol; 26mg Sodium; 22g Carb; 3g Fiber; 17g Sugar; 2g Protein. WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 2 & PointsPlus 3 & SmartPoints 5 & Freestyle 1

MAKE IT FREESTYLE FRIENDLY So here's the thing. At first glance, Fruity Gazpacho's ingredient list makes our eyes light up! Every ingredient (save the avocado, which is optional) qualifies as "free" in Weight Watchers' Freestyle program. But Weight Watchers applies an important asterisk to fruit in Freestyle: whole fruit and unsweetened fruit salads are free but smoothies are not free. And while Fruity Gazpacho isn't a smoothie, per se, it is blended fruit and that's the worry, that by puréeing the fruit, fruit's usual impact on satiety and sugars is shot. (And that's without the whole thing about Rethinking Fruit for Weight Watchers, which has an enormous impact on my litmus-test-of-one ability to actively lose weight while eating fruit at all, let alone free fruit.) So. To make Fruity Gazpacho Freestyle friendly, I'd chop it up like a fruit salad. To make the jalepeño distribute well, I'd mince it really small, maybe even in a mini food processor with a few grapes and the parsley, to create a "binder" of sorts to hold the fruit salad together. What do you think, Weight Watchers, is this a good solution? Me, I'm going to enjoy it as is but count the SmartPoints.

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SUMMER FRUIT SALAD

Lovely flavor, texture and color contrast

Hands-on time: 15 minutes

• Blackberries or cherries
• Green grapes
• Peaches, chopped
• Other fresh fruit, to taste
• 1/4 cup packed fresh mint
• 3 tablespoons sugar

Gently combine the fruit. Whiz the mint and sugar in a food processor and sprinkle over the fruit.

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More Cold Soups for Summer

(hover with a mouse for a description; otherwise click a photo to view the recipe)

~ more cold soup recipes ~
~ more favorite summer soup recipes ~

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Shop Your Pantry First

(helping home cooks save money on groceries)

~ honeydew ~
~ grapes ~
~ cucumber ~
~ avocado ~
~ bell peppers ~
~ limes ~
~ blackberries ~
~ cherries ~
~ peaches ~


~ All Recipes, By Ingredient ~
~ How to Save Money on Groceries ~

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make this recipe, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.

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