By Ed Sikov
"It sure has been one of those summers!" the talkative senior sitting next to me on the train said as we pulled out of Penn Station toward Babylon. (Yes, there really is a town on Long Island called Babylon. They may as well have named it Gomorrah.) The train's air conditioning was no match for the heat and humidity. It was 7:55 a.m. and my T-shirt was already soaked through. I considered taking it off, but there's a rule against going shirtless on the train, and besides, I didn't want the happy 80-year-old to stare at my phenomenally hairy stomach.
"Sure is," I said with a tone meant to cut off the conversation but that succeeded only in ensuring that it would last for the duration of the trip. I heard all about her grandson's service in Iraq; the intense heat of Iraq; the sand flies in Iraq; the parched earth of Iraq… After 20 minutes of hearing her impromptu recitation of the Britannica entry on Iraq, I began to see myself crawling down the aisle rasping, "Water! Water!"
"I'm sorry, but I have to get some work done," I lied to the elderly woman. "Really! What kind of work do you do?" "I'm a writer." "Really! Have I ever heard of you?" An inspiration struck: "Not unless you read a lot of gay pornography." The old woman gasped "oh!" with an air of panic and remained glued to the window for the rest of the trip.
For that night's dinner I planned to make a recipe from a popular food magazine, but I knew it had to be altered. First I got rid of the third of a cup of sugar. Um, it's the height of watermelon season! Sugaring a ripe yellow watermelon would ruin it. I also nixed the plum tomato. Um, it's the height of the tomato season! You can get taste-free plums all year round. I went instead with two yellow beefsteaks to go with the melon. Four cloves were total overkill, as were four whole star anise pods. I went with one of each. Finally, I chopped a few Thai chili peppers and put them in a small dish for us to add or not, according to individual taste. And I added some Absolut and made it a cocktail. If you just want plain unspiked gazpacho, just leave out the Absolut. (Duh!)
Gazpacho Borracho
Fresh basil – 2 cups sliced or torn, including stems
Star Anise – 1 whole
Clove – 1
Bay leaf – 1
tsp. kosher salt (note: it doesn't have anything to do with religion; kosher salt is coarser than table salt)
large yellow tomatoes – 2
yellow watermelon, cut into chunks – 2 cups
peeled and seeded cucumber – 1 cup
1/4 cup lime juice
Thai chilies (optional)
Ground black pepper to taste
Absolut premium vodka – to taste
Put four to six martini glasses in the freezer. Wash the basil and dry it. Into a small saucepan, add clove, star anise, bay leaf, salt, basil and 1 cup of water. Bring it to a boil, turn off the heat, cover the pan, and let it steep for the time it takes for you bring another small pot full of water to a boil.
Cut an X into the top and bottom of the tomatoes and plunk them into the boiling water for 30 seconds; remove them from the water. The skins should slide right off, but the tomato will remain uncooked. Cut the tomatoes in half sideways (one side gets the stem end, the other the bottom end); pare away any woody remnants of the stem and squeeze the tomato over the sink to remove as many seeds as you can. Cut up the watermelon into chunks, measure carefully and stop when you have more or less two cups.
Place a strainer over the top of a blender or food processor and pour the basil tea through it. Toss out the contents of the strainer. Add the rest of the ingredients (except for the chilies, unless you're sure your guests like their drinks spicy) to the blender or food processor and blend at increasingly high speeds until smooth. Pour blended gazpacho into a large bowl and stir. Blend it again in batches and pour each of these blended rounds of gazpacho into a large pitcher. Stir it, add salt and pepper, taste it, and if you're happy with it, chill it for as long as possible. Add more salt and pepper if necessary; cold food needs more salt than room-temperature or hot food. Add the alcohol to individual glasses to taste.
