Italian Mediterranean Tomato Gazpacho with Burrata and Basil | Gazpacho Mediterraneo di Pomodoro, Burrata e Basilico

Sep 30

11 min read

Gazpacho Mediterraneo di Pomodoro, Burrata e Basilico (Italian Mediterranean Tomato Gazpacho with Burrata and Basil)

Gazpacho reached Italy the way good ideas usually do, borrowed and then improved on local terms. This version keeps the Spanish idea of a raw tomato soup served cold, and gives it a Southern Italian ending: a whole burrata opened in the middle of the bowl, a scatter of basil leaves and a thread of green olive oil. The soup is sharp, savory and cold. The burrata is soft, sweet and cool. Neither is asked to be the other.

Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 30 minutes. Chill: 3 hours. Cook: none, except 10 minutes for the croutons. Total: about 3 hours 45 minutes. Difficulty: easy. Course: antipasto or light first course. Region: Southern Italy, Puglia and Campania.

The Story

Gazpacho is Andalusian at its roots. Long before the tomato, farm laborers in the south of Spain mashed stale bread, garlic, olive oil and vinegar in a wooden bowl to make a cold, cheap and salty meal for the fields. Tomatoes reached Spain from the Americas in the sixteenth century and were accepted slowly. The red gazpacho we know today took its shape in the nineteenth century, when tomato and pepper moved from the edge of the garden to the center of the bowl.

Southern Italy already had its own version of the same instinct. In Puglia and Campania, summer tomatoes were never cooked if they did not have to be. Stale bread was soaked in tomato juice and olive oil for the cold bread salads of the coast, while in Tuscany pappa al pomodoro and panzanella followed the same rule: bread is what lets a poor kitchen turn a glut of tomatoes into a meal. A Mediterranean tomato gazpacho is less an import than a cousin coming home, and it sits comfortably beside the Neapolitan habit of eating tomatoes with basil and the Apulian habit of eating them with bread and oil.

Burrata is the local part of the story. It comes from the dairy country around Andria, in Puglia, where cheesemakers of the Bianchino family are commonly credited with inventing it in the middle of the twentieth century. The idea was thrifty. Scraps of fresh mozzarella curd, called stracciatella, were mixed with cream and sealed inside a pouch of stretched mozzarella so that nothing from the day's production was wasted. The name means buttered, and it describes the interior exactly. Because it is made fresh and travels badly, burrata was for decades a local secret, eaten within hours of leaving the dairy.

Basil closes the triangle. It grows on every windowsill in Campania and Puglia, is planted beside the tomatoes it will be eaten with, and is the herb a Southern Italian cook trusts to say summer. The three ingredients belong to the same season, and in the Apulian countryside they still arrive within the same week of July, tomatoes from the field, basil from the pot and burrata from the dairy that morning. The soup is Spanish in temperature and Italian in every choice that follows, and it works because each part was already meant to sit beside the other two.

Ingredients

Serves 4 generous bowls. Buy the tomatoes for their perfume, not their color: fully ripe, heavy for their size, with a green and sweet smell at the stem. The bread should be a day or two old and made with a simple flour, water, yeast and salt dough. The burrata should have been made within the last two days, with a taut skin and milky liquid in its container. The olive oil should be a fruity extra virgin, because it is a main flavor here and not a background.

For the gazpacho

Ripe vine tomatoes, 3 lb (1.35 kg)
Cucumber, peeled and seeded, 1 small, 5 oz (140 g)
Sweet red pepper, seeded, 1/2, 3 oz (85 g)
Shallot, 1 small, 1 oz (30 g)
Garlic clove, 1 small
Stale country bread, crust removed, 2 oz (55 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Red wine vinegar, 1 1/2 tbsp (22 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 1/2 tsp (9 g)
Ice cold water, up to 1/4 cup (60 ml)

For the croutons

Ciabatta, 2 slices, 2 oz (55 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 pinch

For serving

Burrata, 2 balls, 8 oz (225 g) each
Fresh basil leaves, small, 16
Extra virgin olive oil, best quality, 4 tsp (20 ml)
Flaky sea salt, 1 pinch
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Preparation

Salt and drain the tomatoes

Core the tomatoes and cut them into rough chunks, keeping every drop of juice. Toss them with the fine sea salt in a colander set over a bowl and leave them for 30 minutes. The salt pulls out water and dissolves the sugars, and the juice that drips into the bowl is the most flavorful liquid in the recipe. Do not throw it away. Work over a bowl deep enough to catch everything, and press the chunks gently with the back of a spoon at the halfway point to release the juice trapped in the seed pockets.

Soak the bread in the tomato juice

Tear the bread into small pieces and drop it into the drained juice with the red wine vinegar. Leave it for 10 minutes until it is completely soft. The bread is not a filler here. It is the structure that will hold the oil in suspension and give the soup a gentle body. If the bread is very dry, let it soak for a few minutes longer rather than adding more liquid.

Blend until fully smooth

Put the salted tomatoes, the soaked bread and its juice, the cucumber, the red pepper, the shallot and the garlic into a high speed blender. Blend on high for a full minute. With the motor still running, pour in the olive oil in a thin, steady stream over another minute, until the soup turns a pale, creamy coral. If it is too thick to pour from a spoon, add ice water a tablespoon at a time. The blender should stay quiet and the soup should feel cool, never warm, since friction heats it and dulls the fresh taste of the tomato.

Strain and season

Pass the soup through a fine mesh sieve, pressing on the solids with a ladle. Taste it at room temperature and season it a little more sharply than seems right, with salt and a few drops of vinegar. Cold mutes both, and a soup that tastes perfect while warm will taste flat at the table. Discard the strained solids, but do stir a spoonful of the pulp back in if the soup seems thin.

Chill for three hours

Pour the soup into a jar or bowl, cover it and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Put four shallow soup plates in the refrigerator at the same time. The soup should be properly cold, around 40°F (4°C), when it is served. Stir the soup once halfway through the chilling to keep the oil evenly suspended.

Bake the croutons

Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Cut the ciabatta into small cubes and toss them with the olive oil and a pinch of fine sea salt. Spread them on a tray and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, shaking the tray once, until they are golden and hard through. Let them cool on the tray so the last moisture leaves them. They should crack when bitten, not bend.

Bring the burrata to the table

Take the burrata out of the refrigerator 45 minutes before serving and lift it out of its liquid. Set it on a plate, covered loosely, in a cool corner of the kitchen. Stir the chilled soup, ladle it into the cold plates, and finish it as described below.

Plating

Ladle about 1 cup (240 ml) of soup into each chilled plate, making a shallow, even pool. Set half a burrata in the center, cut side up, so the cream shows. Open it gently with a spoon so a little stracciatella spills onto the soup, but leave it looking like a whole cheese, not a stirred one.

Lay four whole basil leaves around the burrata and scatter a few croutons on the far side of the plate. Finish with a teaspoon of the best olive oil, a pinch of flaky salt and a turn of black pepper. Serve at once with grilled bread and a small spoon for the cheese, and set the plates down in front of the diners within a minute of assembly.

Professional Technique

The burrata goes in at the last moment, and never into the blender. Its fat is the reason. Milk fat coats the tongue and softens the perception of acidity, which is exactly what you do not want to do to a soup whose whole character is the sharp, bright taste of raw tomato and vinegar. Blended into the soup, the burrata dissolves into it, the acidity goes quiet and the color turns from vivid coral to a dull, opaque pink.

Placed at the center of the plate, the burrata stays a separate element. Each spoonful becomes a choice, and the contrast between cold, sharp soup and soft, sweet cream makes both taste more clearly.

The temperature of the burrata matters as much as its position. Straight from the refrigerator, at about 38°F (3°C), its milk fat is firm and waxy, its flavor is muted and the stracciatella inside is stiff. Left out for 45 to 60 minutes, until it reaches a cellar temperature of about 60 to 65°F (16 to 18°C), the fat softens, the cream runs and the sweet lactic flavor comes forward. That is the gap between the cheese and the soup, about 20 degrees, and it is what the diner feels.

Basil follows the same rule, and it is added as a whole leaf. Blended, the leaf is torn into thousands of pieces, its enzymes oxidize almost immediately, and the soup turns a muddy grey green with a grassy, bitter edge. Placed on the plate whole, at the last second, the leaf keeps its aroma locked in its oils until the diner brings the spoon close, and it releases fresh perfume with every bite.

Texture and Moisture Control

A good gazpacho is an emulsion, and its texture is built in two places. The first is the bread. Its starch swells in the tomato juice and holds the olive oil in tiny droplets, which is why the soup looks creamy without a drop of cream. The second is the slow stream of oil into a running blender. Adding the oil all at once gives a thin, oily soup that separates in the plate within minutes.

Salting the tomatoes first controls the moisture. Raw tomatoes release a lot of watery juice when they are cut, and left alone that water dilutes the soup and turns it pale. Draining the chunks concentrates their flavor, and adding back only the juice you have tasted means you decide how loose the soup will be. Straining is the last step, and the one that turns a rustic puree into something silky.

Chilling changes everything. Cold thickens the emulsion slightly and dulls sweetness and salt, so season and check the consistency again after 3 hours, and loosen the soup with a spoonful of ice water if it has tightened. The croutons need the opposite: baked dry, cooled completely and added last.

Professional Mise en Place

Equipment and tools

High speed blender and a fine mesh sieve
Colander over a bowl for draining the tomatoes
Sheet pan for the croutons
Ladle, small spoon and a sharp knife for opening the burrata
Four shallow soup plates, chilled
Small tray for the burrata, to catch any liquid while it comes up to temperature

Prepared ahead

Soup blended, strained and chilled, up to 24 hours ahead
Croutons baked and cooled, in an airtight tin, up to 2 days ahead
Basil leaves picked, kept between damp paper towels in the refrigerator
Plates chilled for 30 minutes before service
Cucumber, pepper and shallot washed, trimmed and cut into small pieces, covered and kept cold
Bread torn and ready in a bowl, to soak as soon as the tomato juice has drained

Service setup

Burrata out of the refrigerator 45 minutes before serving, drained and resting on a plate
Soup stirred just before it is ladled
Best olive oil, flaky salt and pepper mill within reach
Basil and croutons added at the pass, at the last second
Spoons, napkins and grilled bread already set on the table before the plates leave the kitchen

Chef Tips

Buy the tomatoes for their smell. A tomato that smells sweet and green at the stem end will make a good soup, and one that smells of nothing will not, however much vinegar you add.

Use a cucumber with few seeds and remove the seeds anyway. They add water and a slightly bitter note. Use only half a pepper, since a whole one turns the soup sweet and heavy.

Choose the burrata as carefully as the tomatoes. It should be made in the last day or two, with a taut, glossy skin and milky liquid in the container. Pick a burrata whose liquid has turned cloudy or sour, and the cheese will not recover.

Serve the gazpacho in a chilled plate rather than a warm bowl. A cold plate keeps the soup at temperature for the whole meal.

Common Mistakes

Blending the burrata into the soup. It turns the soup pink, opaque and heavy, and it removes the contrast that is the reason for the dish. Keep it whole and separate.

Serving the burrata straight from the refrigerator. Cold fat is waxy and mute, and the cream inside does not flow. Give it 45 minutes at cool room temperature before it touches the plate.

Skipping the salting step. Unsalted tomatoes give a watery soup and a pale one, and no later seasoning can fully correct it. The tomato juice you drain is what carries the flavor, so keep it.

Pouring the oil in all at once. The emulsion does not form and the oil floats on top of the soup. Stream it in slowly with the blender running, over at least a minute.

Blending the basil. It oxidizes within minutes and gives the soup a muddy color and a bitter, grassy taste. Add the leaves whole, at the end.

Underseasoning before chilling. Cold mutes salt, acidity and sweetness. Taste the soup at room temperature and season it more firmly than seems right.

Wine Pairing

Vermentino di Gallura DOCG: A dry white from the granite soils of northern Sardinia, with a saline edge and crisp citrus acidity. It meets the vinegar in the soup on equal terms, while its light almond bitterness on the finish runs alongside the basil and the sweet cream of the burrata.

Falanghina del Sannio DOC: The natural Campanian companion, in the same landscape as the tomatoes and basil. Bright acidity, green apple and a floral lift cut through the olive oil, and the wine is light enough that it never covers the freshness of the raw vegetables. Drink it cold and young.

Etna Bianco DOC: Grown on volcanic soils, this Carricante based white has a sharp mineral acidity and a smoky, citrus peel character. It resonates with the tomato acidity and adds a saline finish that makes the burrata taste sweeter. It is the most interesting bottle on the list for a diner who wants something that tastes like a place.

Trento DOC: A dry metodo classico with fine bubbles and brisk acidity. The bubbles cleanse the palate of olive oil and milk fat between spoonfuls, and the toasty, yeasty notes echo the ciabatta croutons.

Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo DOC: A dry rosé with red cherry fruit, soft tannin and a savory finish. Its fruit meets the ripe tomato directly, and its body is enough to stand up to the burrata without becoming heavy. Serve it well chilled, at about 46°F (8°C).

Storage & Reheating

The soup keeps in a sealed jar in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, and its flavor rounds out after the first night. Stir it well before serving, because the emulsion settles a little. Taste it again and add salt or vinegar if the chilling has flattened it. This soup is served cold, so there is no reheating, and it should not be frozen, since thawing breaks the emulsion and leaves the tomatoes watery.

Burrata is best eaten the day it is opened. Keep any leftover half in its liquid in the refrigerator for no more than 24 hours, and bring it to cool room temperature again before serving. The croutons keep in an airtight tin for 2 days and can be crisped in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3 minutes. Never store the finished plate.