Gazpacho with Homegrown Tomatoes, Peppers and Cucumber

Kim Hastreiter’s Salad/Soup Remix

NOTES

Now is the time to jump on the gazpacho train, while tomatoes are at their peak. Please, for the love of produce, don’t even think of making this recipe from October to July.  This is a super seasonal dish, and one worth waiting 10 months of the year to prepare. Try to stick to red tomatoes, as opposed to yellow or green to keep the color of the soup pure and bright.

This is a recipe with some latitude, one that is quite forgiving and for which you should appeal to your own preferences of salty, sweetness, acidity and richness. Add more olive oil if you like, a pinch more salt or a little more sherry. It’s a beautiful act of improv. Kim says, “I do not use recipes. I am a free form cook. For gazpacho especially, I use my eyes and sense of taste.”

INSTRUCTIONS

Cut 5 super amazing, ripe, juicy, perfectly IN SEASON heirloom tomatoes in half. Squeeze the seeds out into a high powered blender, and then cut the tomato into 3” chunks. Add to the blender. Add an entire vidalia onion and three cloves of garlic to the mix.

Remove the skin of a cucumber, slice in half lengthwise and scoop out and discard the seeds. Add the cucumber to the blender in 2” pieces, along with your red hot peppers and a BIG fistful of basil.

Add olive oil, 1 tbs of good sherry vinegar, tomato juice and a generous pinch of salt.

Blend until completely smooth and taste. Add more sherry vinegar 1 tsp at a time if the soup lacks acidity, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Ladle soup into bowls, and cut corn kernals from the cob and scatter on top. Garnish with garlicky croutons or even a dollop of yogurt.

RECIPE

DIFFICULTY

EASY

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SERVES

4

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PREP TIME

5 MINS

Gazpacho

  • large  
    ripe heirloom tomatoes
  • meium 
    vidalia onion (ends and skin removed)
  • cloves  
    garlic
  • medium 
    English cucumber
  • small  
    spicy peppers (serrano or thai bird)
  • 1/3  
    cup 
    extra virgin olive oil
  • cup 
    Genovese basil (stems removed)
  • tbs 
    sherry vinegar (plus more to taste)
  • cup 
    organic tomato juice
  •  
     
    Maldon Salt and Pepper to taste
  • cob 
    fresh corn (optional)
  •  
     
    croutons (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

Cut 5 super amazing, ripe, juicy, perfectly IN SEASON heirloom tomatoes in half. Squeeze the seeds out into a high powered blender, and then cut the tomato into 3” chunks. Add to the blender. Add an entire vidalia onion and three cloves of garlic to the mix.

Remove the skin of a cucumber, slice in half lengthwise and scoop out and discard the seeds. Add the cucumber to the blender in 2” pieces, along with your red hot peppers and a BIG fistful of basil.

Add olive oil, 1 tbs of good sherry vinegar, tomato juice and a generous pinch of salt.

Blend until completely smooth and taste. Add more sherry vinegar 1 tsp at a time if the soup lacks acidity, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Ladle soup into bowls, and cut corn kernals from the cob and scatter on top. Garnish with garlicky croutons or even a dollop of yogurt.

Kim Hastreiter is a human sponge for all forms of creative production, and her nose for “the next big thing” has become her calling card and her life’s work.

Kim and partner David Hershkovits started Paper Magazine in 1984, as a black and white fold-out publication devoted to pop culture. 31 years later, the magazine is still unapologetically pushing boundaries, as you might have noticed with the recent #BreakTheInternet issue. This mega media coup encapsulates Kim’s relationship to the fractals of our contemporary culture, and her own resilient magazine. Instead of bemoaning “the death of print,” Paper used it’s print platform to send shockwaves rippling through the endless waters of the internet, via Kim Kardashian’s butt. While happily giving the people what they want, Kim H. managed to work one of her favorite photographer’s into the deal, commissioning the 75 year old French artist Jean Paul Goude to shoot the spread. The now beyond-famous images are scandalous but artful, supremely classy while perfectly affixed to a hashtag destined to go viral. If that’s not genius, I don’t know what is.

Kim’s world is full of color, diversity and true embrace of human ingenuity and expression on every level of the spectrum. She has as much enthusiasm for her gazpacho and her terrace-grown tomatoes as she can about Miley Cyrus or her favorite non-profit art organization, Creative Growth. Let Kim remind you all that if you are not feeling inspired, you just aren’t paying attention!

Kim Hastreiter in Her Own Words

Julia Sherman: You began your career as a visual artist. What kind of work did you make?

Kim Hastreiter: I was a conceptual artist. I made paintings, videos, and photography installations that were made using the imagery from my video works.

JS: And do you still consider yourself an artist?

KH: I think like an artist and I feel like an artist, but I am not an artist by vocation, as I do not have the devotion or rigor to make art in a vacuum that does not collaborate with or communicate to others. I also am not interested in joining the “art world.” I feel that this world is quite conservative and limited and rarified. I guess I am more a creative communicator.

JS: Do these titles even matter?

KH: Not to me.

JS: You have long been a champion of “outsider art,” both as a collector and as a supporter of the program at The Center for Creative Growth in SF. You even commissioned some of the artists from the center to illustrate their interpretations of the runway looks of a handful of major designers for Paper Mag. What compels you about the genre of “outsider art,” if you can call it that?

KH: The reason why I have been a champion of Creative Growth in Oakland is because this is actually a group that does not support or believe in the concept of “outsider art.” Creative growth artists are ARTISTS not, “OUTSIDER ARTISTS.” And as artists their abilities are equal to and sometimes even superior to what the world regards as “normal” artists.

The reason Creative Growth artists are sometimes better is that they have no agenda and their art is 100% pure. The artist signatures are a powerful and consistent as any artist anywhere. The only difference is the life experience the work is drawn from.

JS: Amen. Who are some of your favorite artists?

KH: I love a wide variety of art. I love the work of everyone from Rene Ricard to Alfred Jenson, from Tauba Auerbach to Cindy Sherman, from Kehinde Wiley to Dan Miller (from Creative Growth), from Margaret Kilgallen to Jean Michel Basquiat, I love the work of Geoff McFetridge to Jose Parla, I love Cy Twombly and I love John Waters, I love Seydou Keita and I love Weegie, I love William Scott (Creative Growth) and I love Chris Johanson.

I could go on…

JS: When you started Paper Mag, did you imagine it would become so much more than a publication?

KH: I always dreamt it could be big and amazing. When I started it, there was no internet, no computers no cell phones…only fax machines. Who could have imagined the digital revolution back then? But, we were always about word of mouth and spreading the word… We were always scrappy and poor, small and nimble, and we worked by the skin of our teeth. The internet was a gift from god to us because all of the sudden, we didn’t have to pay for printing to reach a ton of people. The digital age called for working in the way we’d always worked.

I think the internet has enabled us to reach for unimaginable heights. I call it, “the revenge of the indie.” Corporate culture is the dinosaur of the 20th century and it is no longer relevant. These huge companies are stumped; they don’t know what to do.

I’m an old radical and a punk, so I get pleasure in watching the old media companies sweat.

JS: What was the inspiration for the Break The Internet issue? Is that issue an impossibly tough act to follow?

KH: This was Drew Elliot’s idea. Drew has worked for us for many years and he is brilliant. He started as an intern and is now driving the Paper Mag ship. I love watching him flourish and it’s a pleasure to hand the keys to a young gun who gets the future and our past.

JS: As someone who is constantly ahead of the curve, where do you look for inspiration?

KH: I just keep an open door policy. You have to be out there and always welcome people in to show you what they do.

Right now LA is where much of my inspiration is coming from. New York is too expensive for creative kids to work out of.

I also adore instagram because I am a visual person and this is a visual medium. I find so much talent and amazingness on instagram. The best is when I find someone new to fall in love with, and I can just look at who that person is in love with, and so on. And more often than not, I find more amazingness the deeper I go.

JS: Have you ever been bored?

KH: NO!!!!!!!!! I have to live in cities like New York or Los Angeles though. I crave the blind ambition, the outrageous energy and creativity at all times.

JS: When did you start gardening? What compels you about that practice? Is it a counterpoint to your super social lifestyle?

KH: I began gardening twenty years ago when I moved into my apartment on Washington Square Park. I have such amazing sunlight and I love nurturing a garden bursting in color with flowers, herbs, aromas, night blooms, fruit and vegetables. I love the Spring and Summer. I leave my terrace door open all year round it’s like my second living room; It makes my apartment seem bigger.

JS: What are some of your favorite ways to use your bounty?

KH: Right now my figs are all ripening. I just bought some prosciutto, and that’s dinner! Imake some mean tomato dishes and I also love to make lemon verbena sun tea.