Happy 4th of July! To me, the 4th of July is a small-town holiday, and not just because of the inevitable disappointment of San Francisco's fog-shrouded fireworks. This is a day for shiny fire trucks and kids with red-white-and-blue ribbons woven through the spokes of their bikes riding down Main Street, for the scent of hamburgers grilling at the neighbors' house, for popsicles dripping sticky down your arm and the magic glow of sparklers in the deepening twilight, an appetizer to the fireworks booming over the high school football field.

Walking down the street in Novato, where I'm house-sitting for the next few weeks, every shop is festooned with flags, glitter, and red, white, and blue. From Mill Valley to Noe Valley, goofy patriotism wins the day when it comes to decor. Can there be too much bunting? Too many Uncle Sam hats covered in stars and stripes? Too many cupcakes topped with raspberries and blueberries?

Unlike, say, Thanksgiving, the 4th of July is a holiday where everyone wants to eat, but no one really wants to cook. For one, unless you live right in chilly San Francisco, it's too hot to be in the kitchen, not when there's ice-cold beer in the cooler and lemonade on the patio. Get someone--your husband, your butch spouse--to man (or woman) the grill, pile up the sausages, salmon, or burgers around them, hand them a cold drink and presto! Your entree is complete. There remains only the sides, and anyone can pour out a bowl of chips, put out some hummus and salsa (we're a melting-pot country, after all), toss together some potato salad and lay out the buns, pickles, lettuce and tomato.

Oh, would that it were that easy! I've been to many, many summer barbecues like that, and there's always a catch. You see, getting the grill started is the duty of the host. And somehow, the host is always too busy cracking beers and kicking back with the bros to notice how half the guests (usually, in my experience, the less chip-inclined female half) are ready to gnaw their own arms in hunger by the time the charcoal is finally ignited. Note to grillers: charcoal takes a long time to heat up and burn down. Longer than you think! Really! Even you with the flick-the-button propane grills, some preheating is necessary, especially if you're doing ribs or chicken.

Rather than start surreptitiously searching my hosts' drawers for matches, though, I've learned a trick that never fails: Bring gazpacho.

Gazpacho, my friends, is the 4th of July barbecue's best friend. Face it: no one really wants to eat salad at a barbecue. Undressed, it shrivels; dressed, it turns to sludge after an hour in the sun. All those leafy greens take up valuable paper-plate real estate, space that could be better filled with pita chips and guacamole. But when the good parts--the tomatoes, the cucumbers, the olive oil and vinegar--are diced, pureed, and chilled into an easily drinkable soup, what was once superfluous becomes madly refreshing and much more satisfying than a pile of lettuce. As California native M.F.K. Fisher wrote in How to Cook a Wolf, in 1942,

"...it is the perfect summer soup, tantalizing, fresh, and faintly perverse as are all primitive dishes eaten by too-worldly people.

It is good for lunch, or for supper. It is especially good if you have a barbecue, and want some legitimate and not too alcoholic way to keep your guests busy while you turn the steak: put a big tureen of it on the table, and let them serve themselves into cups, and eat toasted crusts with it if they want. Then when you declare the entree done, whether it be filet or ground-round patties, you will find appetites sharp and wits fairly clear, and a satisfying patina of conversation glimmering in the air."

There are many different gazpachos, all born from the baking summers of Andalusia in central Spain, and since adapted all around the world. Right now, since truly fabulous local tomatoes are still a month away, my current favorite version uses strawberries to boost that perfect balance of acid and sweet.

Many recipes call for canned tomato or V8 juice; I find it too tongue-coatingly thick and metallic for something as pure as this salad soup. Ice water helps the cool vegetables along; you can add more ice cubes after chilling, to keep it cold on the buffet. Serve in a punch bowl or pitcher, with glasses or mugs alongside. It also makes a great first course for a sit-down lunch; in that case, add a spoonful of finely diced strawberries, tomatoes, and cucumbers to each bowl, and drizzle with basil oil just before serving. Or, for true 4th of July kitsch, you can top each bowl with stripes of creme fraiche and "stars" of fresh blueberries. Hurrah for the red, white, and blue!

Strawberry Gazpacho
Sweet summer strawberries give a certain je ne sais quoi to this excellent warm-weather refresher, especially in the early summer before local tomatoes are ripe.
Makes 1 ½ quarts (6 cups)

Ingredients
2 pints strawberries, preferably organic, hulled
1 red pepper, seeds removed, chopped
1 large tomato, cored
½ sweet onion, such as Maui, Vidalia, or Walla Walla, peeled and chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 large cucumber, peeled and chopped
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, or to taste
1/4 tsp sea salt, or to taste
freshly ground pepper
1 cup ice water, or as needed

Basil Oil
1/2 cup basil leaves, loosely packed
1/3 cup olive oil

Garnish
1 pint strawberries, hulled and finely diced
1 cucumber, peeled, seeds scooped out, finely diced
generous handful of small pear or cherry tomatoes, seeds removed, finely diced

Preparation
1. Combine strawberries, vegetables, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper, and ½ cup water. Stir well and refrigerate for one to three hours to let flavors blend.

2. Pour mixture into a blender and puree until smooth. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt, vinegar, or oil as needed. Add more water if gazpacho seems too thick. If desired, strain through a chinois or medium strainer for a smoother texture. Refrigerate for several hours, until thoroughly chilled.

3. While soup is chilling, make basil oil. To preserve the leaves’ bright green color, blanch basil in boiling water for 10 seconds. Drain and pat dry. Puree with oil until smooth. Cover tightly and refrigerate until needed.

4. Just before serving, dice garnish ingredients and toss together. Pour soup into small bowls or shot glasses. Top each serving with a spoonful of garnish and a few drops of basil oil.

This summer I made a vow to get over to the farmers' market—any farmers' market—once a week. For the most part I've managed to do it. And for the past 3 or 4 months I've purchased a bag of fresh ripe tomatoes each week. Ever since they hit the market, I've been obsessed. And now I'm in a downright panic, as they are on their way out.

This week, I had a pile of gorgeous Ella Bella tomatoes—my favorite tomato vendor at the SF farmers' market who just pulled up stakes and moved to Hawaii, wah!—which were threatening to go bad (it's been a busy week!). So, as my one last hurrah, and in celebration of the amazingly sweet, delicious tomatoes I had on hand, I came up with this super fresh, super fast, and super easy gazpacho. It's a delicious way to bid tomatoes farewell for another year.

There are tons of versions of gazpacho, a soup that, at its best, lets the flavor of sweet, seasonal tomatoes shine. It is by far one of my favorite soups of all time, simple perfection on a hot summer day (well, at least for us in the Bay Area where it still seems to be summer). This Andalucian-style version is inspired by a recipe from Wild Honey restaurant in London.

Last Hurrah Gazpacho

Serves: 4

Ingredients:
About 5–6 large ripe heirloom tomatoes
1/2 jar roasted piquillo peppers (about 5 peppers or 5 ounces)
1/2 English cucumber, peeled and seeded
1 small garlic clove
2 teaspoons Worcestershire
2 teaspoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons white balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup good-quality extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
Hot sauce, such as Melinda's habañero sauce

For garnishing:
Cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
Avocado, peeled, seeded and diced
Olive oil, for drizzling
Croutons or sliced, toasted sourdough baguette

Preparation:
1. Have ready a medium-mesh sieve set over a large bowl. Halve the tomatoes crosswise and squeeze the seeds into the sieve. Cut out the stem, chop the tomatoes and put in a blender. Add the juice from the bowl and discard the seeds.

2. Add the peppers, cucumber, garlic, Worcestershire, vinegars, and oil, and process until smooth. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Pour the soup through the sieve set over the bowl. Transfer to an airtight container and chill for at least an hour, and up to a day.

3. Garnish with cucumber, avocado, and a drizzle of olive oil. Serve with the croutons scattered over the top or toasted baguette.

Indian Summer indeed! Global warming is alive and well when it's pushing 100 degrees in San Francisco in September. Not wanting to make anything that involved getting near a stove, I called my friends J & J and asked if I could come over to their uber swanky and air conditioned kitchen and whip something up for us for dinner. When I woke up yesterday morning and it was 82 degrees, all I could think about was cold gazpacho soup with some thick crunchy crusty bread.

I asked J various questions. Do you have a Cuisinart? No. Do you have a blender? No. Do you have a stick blender? Yes. Is it charged? No. Ok, I'll run to the store, I'll bring my stick blender, and you chill the tomatoes. An hour or so of chopping later, accompanied by a glass of champagne, we dined on some darn good gazpacho soup, much to my amazement, relief and delight. I hadn't made it in literally years, maybe a decade (?!?!), so I was quite nervous but thanks to some gorgeous heirloom tomatoes and a lot of love, it was a hit. I showed some restraint in the chopped garlic area -- vampires, be damned -- but had I not, it would have overpowered, so go with 2 cloves, not the 4 that I originally intended. One jalepeno and we were sufficiently spicy.

J served the soup with a crisp rose, Domaine de Beaurenard, from the Cotes du Rhone and we toasted (our one minimal use of the oven) some thick country bread and rubbed it with a garlic clove and a roma tomato cut in half as they do in Spain. A little garnish of basil chiffonade and we were good to go...

Cold Gazpacho Soup

Ingredients:
1 large can (20-something oz) whole peeled + 3 - 14 oz cans Progresso diced tomatoes + juice
2-3 heirloom tomatoes (diced, save juice and add to bowl)
1 basket small orange baby tomatoes (cut in half across the equator)
1/4 - 1/2 cup white wine or champagne vinegar (depending on consistency & taste)
1 red pepper (cut out ribs, seeds & dice)
1 yellow pepper (cut out ribs, seeds & dice)
1 jalepeno pepper (cut out ribs, seeds & dice)
1 avocado (half for the soup, half for the garnish)
2 large shallots, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 ribs celery, diced
1 english cucumber (cut off most of the green, leave a little for color, scoop out seeds, dice)
juice of 1 lime
sea salt, fresh ground pepper

Preparation:
1. Save a few tablespoons of the baby tomatoes, red pepper, yellow pepper, cucumber, celery, half the avocado, and 1/2 tbsp of diced jalepeno for the garnish.

2. Put everything but the avocado in a small bowl, add a swirl of olive oil, some sea salt, fresh ground pepper and stir. Add the avocado and stir gently. Set aside.

3. If using a stick blender, combine all the vegetables + lime juice in a large glass (or non-reactive) bowl along with half the vinegar and blend. I like mine a bit chunky, not super smooth, so I blended in pulses moving the stick blender along the outside of the bowl. If using a cuisinart, just pour it all in and pulse until you get the consistency you'd like. Add more liquid (vinegar, stock, water) if you want a thinner consistency. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as you'd like.

4. Mine didn't not come out a bright red as you might imagine because I added the avocado but I like the creamy consistency it gives the soup. I topped each bowl with a tbsp or two of the vegetable brunoise garnish, a few ribbons of basil, a drizzle of good olive oil and a few drops of really good balsamic vinegar.

Bon appetit and stay cool!

Cooking becomes problematic for me when the weather climbs above 85 degrees. Although I still want a delightful meal at the end of the day, I really don’t want to turn on my stove. So, what do you do when the Bay Area is going through yet another scorching week? Make gazpacho!

Until recently (uh… this week, actually) I'd never made gazpacho. I was inspired to concoct this cool Spanish soup, however, after tasting some at Cesar's Piedmont Avenue restaurant a couple of weeks ago. Unlike most red tomato gazpachos, the one at Cesar's that evening was a lovely lemony green and was made with cucumbers. It also had a bright summer flavor and was simple yet elegant.

Although I love most soups, I usually don’t go in for the cold ones. Give me a steaming hot vegetable, lentil, chicken, bean or broth soup and I’m quite happy. Cold soups, particularly the fruity variety, just don’t do it for me as they seem like the remnants of a smoothie left out on the counter. Cesar’s cucumber gazpacho, however, was in a class all its own. Smooth and cucumbery, with hints of lemon and vinegar, it was both refreshing and satisfying. My friend Ann and I liked it so much we wiped the plate clean with our bread.

The manager at Cesar's, Kathleen Ventura, was nice enough to give me a copy of the recipe, created by Chef Maggie Pond, when I asked for one. She also said she didn’t mind if I shared it here (thank you, Kathleen). The proportions are on the large side (as with any restaurant recipe), so I cut it down for home use.

When I made the gazpacho this week, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to prepare. I left off the fried croutons and pepper relish, and garnished with some simple cucumber slices instead. I also used Persian cucumbers instead of English cucumbers, simply because they were available at the store where I was shopping. I would think either English or Persian would be fine, or another variety without too many seeds, which can be bitter.

Following is the Cesar’s recipe, trailed by the home version I made that has smaller proportions. If you’re in the mood for a soup that takes less than five minutes to make, is cool and refreshing, and looks pretty in a bowl than I highly recommend it.

Cesar's English Cucumber Gazpacho

Serves: over 12

Ingredients:
8 English Cucumbers
1 1/4 cup Olive oil
1 cup Ice cold water
1 clove Garlic
1/2 cup White wine vinegar
2 Tbsp Fresh lemon juice
2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Black pepper
1/2 tsp Cayenne

Preparation:
1. Peel cucumbers and rough chop. Place all the ingredients in a large bow.
2. In small batches puree mixture in a blender.
3. Serve with fried croutons, a spoonful of pepper relish and a drizzle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Note: For the best results, this should be made in a high speed blender. If you use a food processor you must remove the seeds from the cucumbers.

Home Recipe for Cucumber Gazpacho

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients:
2-3 English Cucumbers or 10 small Persian cucumbers (about 3 cups)
1/4 cup Olive oil
1/4 cup Ice cold water
1/2 small clove Garlic
1 Tbsp White wine vinegar
2 tsp Fresh lemon juice
dash of Salt
dash of Black pepper
a minute sprinkle of Cayenne

Preparation:
1. Peel cucumbers and rough chop. Place all the ingredients in a large bow.
2. In small batches puree mixture in a blender.
3. Garnish with cucumber and a smattering of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
4. Serve with a fresh baguette.