{"id":702,"date":"2010-10-26T01:25:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-26T01:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2010\/10\/26\/drop-everything"},"modified":"2016-01-07T18:50:50","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T23:50:50","slug":"drop-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2010\/10\/drop-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Drop everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year or so ago, when we opened Delancey<\/a>, I thought our lives were over and we would never see our friends again. Now that I type that out, it sounds like I was channeling Chicken Little, but my thinking wasn\u2019t without reason: in the restaurant business, you work when other people play, and that complicates almost everything. But as it turns out, our friends are more flexible than I had given them credit for, and like us, a lot of them work odd hours. So over the past several months, we\u2019ve begun to tweak our collective habits. I didn\u2019t know this, but dinner parties don\u2019t have to take place at dinnertime. You can also have them in the daytime. For example, last Sunday, our friends Sam and Meredith invited us over for what we used to call Game Night, and what we now call Game Day.<\/p>\n

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(In our world, Sam and Meredith are famous for their good ideas.)<\/p>\n

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The plan was to play a game called Agricola<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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But we wound up with too many people for that, so we broke off into groups: Team Agricola, Team Settlers of Catan<\/a>, Team Bananagrams<\/a>, and the wishful Team Naptime, which was quickly disbanded when it was noted that sleeping is not a sanctioned Game Day activity. I played six rounds of Bananagrams and won none. My new life goal is to win once, only once, at Bananagrams. I don\u2019t ask for a lot.<\/p>\n

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On the upside, we also ate some cheese, and we drank a little beer. Meredith roasted dates. Olaiya steamed mussels in white wine.<\/p>\n

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And most important for today\u2019s purposes, my friend Keena taught me to make a spectacular gazpacho, which is big news, because I don\u2019t usually like gazpacho. It often tastes flat and tinny, like canned tomato juice, and on a particularly unfortunate day, it can resemble a regrettable attempt at salsa. Keena\u2019s is neither. It\u2019s smooth and almost creamy, an opaque shade of orange, with a whiff of olive oil and a kick of sherry vinegar. The only sad part of this story is that I was so busy getting destroyed at Bananagrams that I downed it before I thought to take a picture.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m on the road this week, and my Internet connection is so slow that getting this thing posted has aged me by about a year, but I wanted to say hi. That, and that you should drop everything and make this gazpacho, before the good tomatoes and peppers are gone. It\u2019s going to be a long, hard winter of tubers and crucifers. This is our last hurrah.<\/p>\n

Keena\u2019s gazpacho starts with olive oil, which you put in a blender and whip at high speed. It\u2019s an unusual step, and it\u2019s the key, I think, to this recipe. It gives the soup its light, nearly velvety texture, as though you\u2019d sneaked in a dash of cream. When the olive oil thickens and begins to froth, you add garlic, sweet peppers, cucumber, and a combination of yellow and red tomatoes, and then you let it rip along on high for a while longer, until the mixture is smooth enough to be sipped from a glass, if you\u2019re a gazpacho-sipping kind of person. If not, you can spoon it from a bowl. Either way, you\u2019ll want to splash some sherry vinegar into the blender before you serve it, because that\u2019s the spark that gets it glowing.<\/p>\n\n

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Recipe<\/div>\n

Keena\u2019s Gazpacho<\/h2>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n
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