You say tomato...

It's high tomato season. Tons of heirloom tomatoes, tons of beefsteaks, cherries, plum, sweet 100s, and all the other varieties that you can find at the farmers' market. "It's a good thing," as you know who would say .

I love tomatoes. They may very well be my favorite food, EVER. Ripe ones. Big, juicy, tasty ones that sort of scream LATE SUMMER at you. I eat them raw, I eat them in sauce. I eat them in salads, like the one I made last night that I want to tell you about. I eat them on sandwiches, I stuff them, yadda yadda yadda. And when there are no more local tomatoes, it is officially the end of summer to me, and I go into a funk for about a week.

It's interesting , but this is the only food who's disappearance does make me sigh and feel sad. I love asparagus, but when they're gone, they're gone. So too, with strawberries, and with apricots, and even more "mundane" things like cabbages, or carrots, and what have you. But tomatoes? Well, if I had to pick a vegetable to proclaim as a culinary god or goddess, it would be a tomato.

Some of you will know this, so skip ahead. Identifying tomatoes with the Mediterranean, is a mistake. Tomatoes originated in the "new world," in Mexico, and they came over the Atlantic and established their foothold after, ahem "colonization." Older European recipes have no tomatoes in them, because there were no tomatoes. And as I've said, when they first came over to Europe, there was more interest in the leaves than the fruit.

Have you ever tasted a tomato leaf? DON'T. DON'T DON'T DON'T DON'T DON'T. It will make you very ill and you will regret it and resent tomatoes forever.

Well, maybe you won't resent them, but you will be sick. Stick to the fruit, and use them in a recipe like this one, or the one which follows.

Heirloom tomatoes come in many different shapes, colors, and sizes. Get a mix of them. There are farmers who will mix them for you, and I do like their mixes. Cut them up as you see fit. Usually, the tomato will "tell" you how to cut it. A small, elongated one, for example, begs to be cut down the middle into two halves, while a large, round one, calls for slices. A smaller, round one calls for wedges. Don't cut them all the same way. The tomatoes look different, so keep the cuts different, and try to get equal amounts of different colors in your salad bowl.

All these need is a little bit of salt, and then a nice slug of olive oil, before you toss them gently. But.... here's one where I like to gild the lily. We haven't talked much about pesto, and we will. If you have some, you can make a wonderful, very tasty dressing for these tomatoes, simply by taking a few tablespoons of pesto, and mixing this with half again as much vinegar. Champagne vinegar is what I use, but you should use what you like. Taste it for acid and salt, and adjust it . Then pour it over the tomatoes, and toss them. So easy, and so good.

Now, on to something a little different: the tomato based soup that has been called "liquid salad." Yup, gazpacho. I have been making and eating gazpacho for more years than I can count. I think it may have been the first "fancy food," I ever had. I remember being knocked out by the flavor combination. I think there was cilantro in that first one, which is wrong, but I may be wrong about that. I remember feeling like I was eating - or drinking - a very slushy vegetable sorbet. I still feel that way.

Since then, I've made countless pots of gazpacho. And different varieites. I've made sweet ones, ones that were half vegetable and half fruit, ones that had other strange ingredients in them, but I always go back to the first recipe I ever used, one that is in Penelope Casas book "The Foods and Wines of Spain." This is a great, fundamental book if you're interested in Spanish food. You learn about the different regions of Spain, how the geography impacts the food, and there's a wonderful mix of things for the experienced cook who has h ours to spend in the kitchen to make, as well as really quick ones, like this.

I'm very glad that the book is as good as it is, because here, Annalena has to say something she wishes she didn't. In my experience, every cookbook writer, and every chef I have ever met, has been gracious, friendly, and polite. Except for Ms. Casas. I attended a class she gave and I have NEVER seen someone so brusque, so rude to students, and so shocked when Guy and I asked her to sign her books to the two of us. This is a woman who (i) lives in Spain and (ii) works in the cooking field. Two men together shocks her? Someone needs to spend less time making gazpacho, I'll tell you. Oh well, at least the recipe is good.

The book says that it keeps "for many days" in the refrigerator. It DOES improve after a day or so of sitting, but don't make it too far in advance. You lose the freshness of the flavors. And, honestly, it is SO easy to make, that you could whip this up twenty minutes before people are coming over, and have a good starter. Keep that in mind.

To make two generous quarts, get two pounds of luciously ripe tomatoes. You can use heirlooms, but do keep in mind that if you use a mix of colors, you will get a paler soup - something closer to pink than to red. Your call on this one. You'll also need a couple of green peppers, that you'll chop up, and a big onion, also cut up. You don't have to be too precise about this. Cut up the tomatoes too, coring them. You pile all these vegetables together, and then add two kirby cucumbers that you've chopped up, as well as a good quarter cup of red wine vinegar, two chopped cloves of garlic, about a teaspoon of salt, and a cup and a half of water.

This is all in a big bowl. What you'll need is a blender. Start filling it with mixes of the veggies and the liquids and puree it. Keep an eye on it. This is home cooking at its best, so you decide how thick or how smooth you want it. You won't be able to get everything in the blender at once, so do it in batches and put the blended soup in a big bowl. When you're done, take a look. If it's too thick for you, add some more water, and/or puree it again. Heck, you've spent all of ten minutes making this, so spend five more getting it the way you like. Then, taste it. You will probably need more salt. I almost always need more vinegar. Adjust the seasonings, and if your schedule allows you, let it sit overnight in the fridge.

Traditionally, you serve this with chopped up bowls of cucumber, pepper and onion, as well as croutons of fried bread. Your friends decide how they want to adorn their soup. There are no rules here. I am motivated to use the onions, but to serve the cucumbers and peppers as sorbets, to make the soup even more refreshing. The fried bread is nice if you don't get as fancy as I am talking about here.

This soup is about as low calorie as you can get. There's no fat in it. There's lots of vegetables, and you can play with things as you see fit. It's high summer, this stuff is around, so for heaven's sake, make a BIG BATCH of it, and drink it straight down. It's a wonderful "summer tonic," if you know what I mean, too.