At a recent dinner at SER, we had a beet gazpacho topped with Cabrales cheese foam, garnished with white anchovies. We've re-created it here, using goat cheese, and it turned out wonderfully -- earthy, rich, not too beet-y, and the cheese foam and anchovies elevate it to restaurant level. For the gazpacho, you'll need a powerful blender for a smooth texture, and for the foam, you'll need an iSi whip cream siphon. We got a large tub of Boquerones from a restaurant supply store.
Make the gazpacho and foam, and chill both. Plate the gazpacho then top with foam and boquerones; garnish with grind of black pepper.
Beet Gazpacho
I started with recipes from the New York Times and Washington Post. The quantities below don't need to be exact, but these (barely) fit in our vintage Vitamix blender. We normally sieve our tomato gazpacho but didn't feel the need for that here. Pre-cooked and peeled beets made this very quick, and we used canned tomatoes because it's now after tomato season; you could cook and peel fresh beets and use fresh tomatoes, of course.
500 g 1 pound cooked and peeled Beets, roughly chopped
400 g 14.5 ounce canned crushed Tomatoes, unflavored
225 g 1/2 pound English Cucumber, skinned, sliced
1/4 Red Onion, sliced
1/2 Red Bell Pepper, sliced
4 cloves Garlic
60 ml 1/4 C Extra Virgin Olive Oil
30 ml 2 Tbs Sherry Vinegar (to taste)
10 g 1/2 Tbs Kosher Salt (to taste)
Add the Beets and Tomatoes to the blender and blend, adding the other ingredients one by one.
Blend until very smooth.
Taste and adjust Salt and Vinegar.
Chill for at least 2 hours.
Goat Cheese Foam
I used this recipe, cutting it in half for a few servings, but you'll need to double the below quantities to provide for the amount of gazpacho above. We have a little 0.25 L iSi, which is fine for this amount, but you'll probably need the 0.5 L model for a double batch. If you have any flecks in your ingredients (pepper flakes or herbs in the cheese) you will need to sieve it to prevent clogging the iSi, but our cheese was plain so we didn't need to. Here too, the quantities don't need to be exact. The small amount above was too little volume for our Vitamix so I used a stick blender; a food processor might work, but might also be too large for this amount.
125 g 4.4 ounce soft Goat Cheese
65 g 2.2 ounce Sour Cream
11 ml 0.75 Tbs Extra Virgin Olive Oil
5 g 3/4 tsp Kosher Salt
65 g 2.2 ounce Heavy Cream
Blend the Goat Cheese, Sour Cream, Olive Oil, and Salt until smooth.
Add the Heavy Cream and blend briefly to combine (you don't want to whip the cream yet) or stir in thoroughly.
Load it into the iSi Whipper: I filled a ziptop bag then snipped off the corner and used it like a pastry bag to get the thick cream mixture into the whipper.
Add the lid, and charge with 1 Nitrous Oxide cartridge (2 for a 1 L whipper).
Chill for at least an hour
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