rosé wine and gazpacho

As I sit in my small Parisian flat on this Sunday during a heatwave (33°C), my two fans blowing at cross-currents with me strategically positioned in the middle, I have just enjoyed what many people in France consume during the summer: cold gazpacho accompanied by a glass (or two) of chilled rosé wine.  Délicieux.

There’s a popular brand in the supermarkets here that’s quite good. But when I learned that Alvalle is owned by PepsiCo, I decided to make my own.  gazpacho 003Nothing could be easier.  And for anyone on a diet, remember you’re eating raw liquidized vegetables.  Most fruits and vegetables are free on the Weight Watchers program, so you can eat all you want (recipe below).gazpacho 010Rosé wines have enjoyed phenomenal success in the past decade or so. The region of Provence is the spiritual home of rosé, but I enjoy a Corsican varietal.gazpacho 017

Gazpacho

6 ripe tomatoes, 1 purple onion, 1 cucumber, 1 sweet red bell pepper, 2 stalks celery, fresh parsley, 1 clove garlic, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, 1/4 cup olive oil, freshly squeezed lemon juice, 1 or 2 small teaspoons sugar, salt and pepper, 1 tsp Worcestershire and/or Tabasco, 4 cups good quality tomato juice.

Don’t worry if you don’t have all these ingredients, I didn’t have the celery, parsley or Tabasco yesterday. Combine in a blender or with a hand-held mixer. Be careful not to overblend because you want it slightly chunky. None of the recipes I saw called for fresh basil. I added fresh basil.

Bon appétit !

2 thoughts on “rosé wine and gazpacho

  1. I will be visiting Paris 17th of August for two weeks. Thank you for the Corsican Rose hint. I hope the unusual warm weather has departed by the time of my arrival. Have you ever taken a day trip to Mt St Michelle? Is this possible? I very much enjoy your blog! Warmest Regards, Toni

    • Hello Toni and thanks for your comments. Yes, I did visit Mont Saint-Michel many years ago. I had a car back then so we drove. If you won’t be renting a car, there is a bus and train service from Paris. Or you can go on a tour bus with a group. It’s a long day, but worth it because the site is really special…totally unique. I have two pieces of advice concerning Mont Saint-Michel. There are lots of steps to climb. Lots. Secondly, if you’re out walking around the perimeter, be careful at the end of the day when the tide comes rushing in. I just found this blog on the subject that pretty well sums the place up (below). Have a great time in Paris. Watch out for pickpockets! Crime has increased here since the recession. Cheers, Juliet

      http://paintrock.net/farnborough/Pages/mt__st__michel.htm

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s