Watermelon Gazpacho
A cold summer soup, and an accidental piece of Chinese dietary therapy.
Season Summer
Ingredients
- 4 ripe vine tomatoes
- Watermelon, an equal weight to the tomatoes
- 1 cucumber, peeled
- 1 red bell pepper, deseeded
- 10 fresh basil leaves
- 5 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
- ½ teaspoon dried chilli flakes, or one small Thai chilli
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
- Finely chopped red onion, to garnish
Method
Blend everything until completely liquefied. Serve chilled, with the onion scattered on top.
This is an American take on an Iberian soup. But it happens to be built almost entirely from what Chinese dietary therapy would put in front of you in August.
Watermelon — xī guā 西瓜 — is sweet and cold, and it is the food most associated with clearing summerheat: the heavy, thirsty, irritable, depleted state that a New York August produces. It is traditionally called tiān shēng bái hǔ tāng 天生白虎汤, the natural White Tiger Decoction, after the classical formula for high fever with great thirst. That is a serious comparison and it is meant seriously. Cucumber and tomato do related work.
The chilli, basil and oregano are not decorative either. Chinese summer eating is cooling but not cold — a little pungency keeps the digestion moving so that a bowl of cold soup does not simply sit there. If you are someone whose stomach objects to cold food, let it come up towards room temperature before you eat it.
