In case you didn’t notice, it’s full-on tomato season. From the backyard gardeners in the neighborhood who insist on giving you a brown paper bag full of their yield to the local farm stands overflowing with cherry and heirloom varieties, there is an eat-over-the-sink, ripe tomato sandwich in your near future.
As delicious as that may be, it might not satisfy your August afternoon thirst. Leave it to the Spaniards to figure out what to do with an abundance of tomatoes: Make a batch of gazpacho!
“I love this gazpacho recipe because you can drink it like a V8 on a hot summer’s day,” says Patty Gentry, farmer and founder of Early Girl Farm in Brookhaven. “It’s energizing, cool, refreshing, and an incredible way to celebrate tomato season.”
Early Girl Farms owner and chef Patty Gentry was inspired by her greenhouse manager to make this cool, flavorful summer soup. (Photos by Doug Young)
Gentry, a veteran chef who ran the Hampton Chutney Company in SoHo before returning to her native Long Island, was inspired to create this gazpacho recipe by Early Girl Farm’s greenhouse manager Katrina Udle, who brought memories of the dish back home after a year in Spain.
“I moved to Valencia in the sweltering month of September 2014, just before I turned 20,” recalls Udle. “My host mom was an excellent cook who often made gazpacho as a light and refreshing meal, which now, as a farmer, I love to make with all our extra delicious tomatoes and cucumbers!”
Gentry, who uses organic, regenerative, no-till practices on the three-acres she rents from Mama Farm, the 28-acre property in Brookhaven, founded by actress Isabella Rossellini, took the veggie touches regaled by Udle and streamlined them into something more sippable.
“I feel like in the United States, gazpacho, in my experience, has been served more like salsa,” she says of the chunky accoutrement to tortilla chips. “It has chopped cucumber and chopped tomato. It isn’t a drink but more like something you eat with a spoon,” Gentry continues, “I love the Spanish gazpacho because, basically, it’s just the tomatoes.”
After an apprenticeship at Ecco Farm in East Hampton, Gentry started Early Girl Farm in 2010, initially to supply chef friends and restaurants (including Quogue’s Stone Creek Inn and a smattering of highly touted Brooklyn eateries) with heirloom varietals.
“Isabella [Rossellini] suggested doing a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture], which I was hesitant to do because I never ‘owed’ produce,” recounts Gentry. “Being paid upfront was a bit stressful because I didn’t know if we could produce.”
Her farm’s first CSA began with 30 people and quickly expanded to over 160 in 2023, which Gentry decided to trim for quality control. “I dropped it back down to 100 this year and pick-ups on Saturday only,” she says.
Left, Gentry making dosas with just-picked ingredients; right, her winning, smooth-like-velvet gazpacho. (Photos by Doug Young)
Among the Saturday benefits for CSA members is Gentry’s makeshift Dosa Café, where she prepares thin, savory crepes filled with just-picked farm ingredients on a gas-grilled flat top under a tent. However, it’s the gazpacho, offered by the cup and in grab-and-go quarts, that frequently encourages summertime members to linger after collecting their produce.
“We process 35 quarts of cut tomatoes to do a batch of gazpacho each week,” says Gentry of the popular offering, which surprisingly has very little garlic, onions or peppers for all its zing. “We use a quart of shishito peppers, two onions and three cloves of garlic for all that,” explains Gentry of the ratios. “When I put garlic into the food processor, I just use a sliver because garlic is the kind of thing that expands. The same with the sherry vinegar. A little goes a long way and gives it depth.”
Gentry offers an Early Girl tip when making the gazpacho at home: “At the farm, we like to keep color groups together, for example, white tomatoes for white gazpacho, yellow tomatoes for yellow gazpacho, red and pink, etc.” says Gentry. This emphasis on simple utilization reflects Gentry’s primary joy within the CSA: teaching members how to make the most of their fresh produce.
Early Girl Farm gazpacho
Ingredients
- 2 large ripe beefsteak tomatoes (approximately 2 lbs), washed, cored and cut into chunks
- 1 small green pepper or 2 shishito peppers, washed and cut in half
- 1/3 of a cucumber, peeled and cut into chunks
- 1 slender slice of red onion, or 1 scallion
- 1/3 clove garlic
- 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
- 1/4 cup good extra virgin olive oil (plus a little extra for garnish)
- 2 sprigs parsley, washed and chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Place all of the ingredients except the olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper into a blender. Blend until liquified, smooth and uniform in consistency.
- Drizzle olive oil slowly into the blender on low speed until it's fully emulsified into the rest of the ingredients.
- Strain through a mesh strainer with a ladle so you can push and get every drop leaving only seeds and skins behind.
- Add salt and pepper to taste.
- Garnish with a drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle with fresh parsley.
