So I was standing there, chopping veggies to make chopped salad (see previous example here), and wondering what to do with all that reserved tomato juice I had saved from the salad plus the lomi lomi salmon. Suddenly, a word popped into my noggin: Gazpacho! Oooh, I hadn’t had *that* in a while.

I like tomato-based soups, and gazpacho is one of my favorite variations of tomato soup, with that spark of spicyness from the raw garlic. A chilled soup would go along great with the chopped salad. So I went over to Epicurious and found this recipe

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Gazpacho-239209

It’s a pretty simple recipe, but one ingredient that was new to me was smoked Spanish paprika. And what do you know, we actually happened to have a package of that, that we purchased at the Penzey’s Spices store in Houston!

This was one of the best gazpachos I’ve made. It’s not too spicy, as I held back on the pepper and the raw garlic. That smoked Spanish paprika made the dish, I thought. Our friend raved about it, saying it was better than the one he had tasted in Italy that got him hooked on gazpacho in the first place.

This recipe is a keeper. I’m gonna make it again soon (of course, using only Annie’s homegrown tomatoes)!

Aloha, Nate