Autumn Appetizer - Goat Cheese Stuffed Figs

I’m a summer sort of person - I love the hot weather, I love drinking rose’ on the porch or dock, I love watching baseball, I just prefer summer over any other time of the year.  But when it comes to recipes and cool flavors and aromas, few things can top autumn.

I’ve got so many food related posts to work on as I’ve been experimenting quite a lot in the kitchen these days, but something I’d like to share this weekend is my favorite autumn appetizer.  It’s easy and fairly quick to make and very seasonal, and I’ve been making it for a few years and each time I enjoy it more.

Basically, they’re goat cheese stuffed figs.  Simple enough, right?

We have fig trees in our yard but they’re easy enough to find in a store at this time of the year, and I mean fresh figs, not the dried kind, as they’re easier to stuff when they’re fresh, as opposed to reconstituted.  Anyway, I recommend black mission figs.  And you can buy the small log of fresh plain goat cheese or you can buy the crumbled kind (which is actually a lot easier when stuffing, but it’s up to you and depends on what you can find, obviously).

I begin by cutting the stem plus a bit of the top off the fig, and then I clean some of the inside out of the fig - leave some but clean some out.  When you’ve cleaned out all the figs, begin stuffing them with goat cheese.  Once they’re all stuffed and on a platter, sprinkle them (and be conservative) with ground nutmeg, and drizzle with fresh lemon juice (again, be conservative) and honey.  It’s to die for.

I’d recommend some prosciutto di Parma on the side - the delicate meat and saltiness is perfect alongside the sweet fig and tangy goat cheese.  And I’d also recommend a sparkling wine - I almost always go with a sparkling rose’ when pairing with this appetizer.

Sounds easy and delicious?  That’s because it is!

Goulash & Blaufrankisch

Being a sales representative for a company that imports and distributes mostly French wine and having a name like Jacqueline, often people assume I’m French until they find out otherwise.  And generally, I identify myself as a Sicilian American, since that’s pretty much how I was raised.  But I’m also Hungarian and Slovakian (or, as I’d like to call my Hungarian heritage, Magyar).  And what I’ve noticed in the past few years is that while it’s quite common to be of Italian, Irish, German, Polish, etc. heritage, being Hungarian is a little less common and lately there have been quite a few Hungarians and Hungarian Americans coming out of the woodwork - it’s like we find each other somehow and embrace the common thread.

But Hungarian or not, I’m sure you’ve all heard of goulash.  It’s a delicious Hungarian stew or soup, and I’ve been enjoying making that, even a little more often now.  It’s generally served over egg noodles (that have bee lightly buttered and sprinkled with parsley).  The stew itself consists of vegetables, beef, wine (of course), and it would hardly be Hungarian without paprika.

How about I just tell you how it’s done?  It’s a little time consuming as I’ve clocked it even when I’m moving as quickly as if I were making marinara sauce, and prep time and cook time combined, it gets to somewhere between 2 and 3 hours.  Anyway, I use about a pound and a half of stewing meat (but I still cut away any fat) and cut it into fairly small pieces.  Some say to toss them in flour, but since my dad doesn’t care much for flour in most dishes, I tend to avoid the flour.  And it doesn’t seem necessary anyway.  I heat a bit of olive oil in the large round Le Creuset Dutch oven and brown the meat, seasoning it with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper.  Once the meat is cooked, I remove the meat to a separate bowl but keep the juices left behind.  In the juices, I cook 3 medium sized yellow onions cut into thin rings, roughly a dozen garlic cloves peeled and cut in half, and one of those packages of baby portobello mushrooms (I believe that’s about 8 oz), which I cut into quarters.  I add a bit more olive oil and cover the pot, cooking on med-high heat until the vegetables are softened but have not browned.  I then deglaze the pot with some red wine (some recipes call for sweet red wine but I prefer a good quality dry red with some fruit characteristics).  After letting it cook a bit longer, I add about 2 cups of beef stock and I put the meat back in, as well as a small jar (drained) of roasted red peppers which I love (and I cut them into fairly small pieces), and a quarter of a cup of paprika.  Stir it all together and cover and cook on simmer-low for somewhere around an hour and a half.  The meat will be a lot softer and the stew will have thickened a bit and reduced somewhat.  Once it cools a bit, I add a cup of sour cream and stir it in, and heat it up again and serve it over the noodles.

It’s really easy, just a little time consuming, like I said.

My favorite pairing is currently Blaufrankisch, from Austria.  I’m a sucker for Austrian wines, both red and white, as I mentioned in my last blog post.  But something about the dry, spicy, earthy, and somewhat tart red wine like Blaufrankisch just seems so perfect with the goulash.  Eventually I’ll try a Hungarian red with it, but for now, Blaufrankisch suits me just fine (and as in the case of Zweigelt and how I like saying the word, it’s the same thing with Blaufrankisch, I like saying it).

So, in 3 days, I’ll be sitting in a Guild of Sommeliers master class on Austrian wine - while I’ve got a cool new blog post coming on this blog about a great experiment I did this week, my next blog post will probably be on the Austrian class, and it’ll appear on my other blog, Champagne Taste, so please be sure to check it out!

Pairing: Red & Fish?

Niles Crane is convinced he’s got a case of the munchies in one Frasier episode - and he feels he’s doing something radical by pairing “Chilean sea bass with this aggressive Zinfandel!” - he’s right, of course.  You don’t want to pair a wine with a food it might overpower.  But let’s face it - there are few really hard rules in food and wine pairing, and believe me when I say it’s ok to pair some heavier whites with meat dishes and some lighter reds with fish dishes.  (I’m quite open minded with lots of pairings - just don’t try to convince me to drink brut Champagne with cake or chocolate - it’s not romantic, it’s disgusting.)

I’ve had red Burgundies with fish lots of times and it’s often a good pairing (salmon really loves Pinot Noir!), and I’ve done lighter style Tuscan reds with fish as well.  A good Beaujolais (and I mean Villages or Cru) pairs nicely with fish dishes, and of course you can do most lighter style reds with fish - and keep this in mind - it’s especially important to me when applying the idea to lighter style, bright acidity reds, but in general it’s a good idea to get a slight chill on your reds.  No, I don’t suggest serving it as chilled as a while, but Americans tend to drink our reds at room temperature, as opposed to cellar temperature.  My suggestion then?  Put your bottle of red in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes before opening it - trust me, it’ll taste and feel better.  And if it’s got bright acidity with some tart red fruit characteristics, you’ll really want to get that little chill on it, so it won’t have that “bite” to it.

Anyway, most times I drink red.  I do love a good white, especially those from Burgundy, Alsace, and Germany - but oftentimes it’s red that satisfies me.  So recently, I wanted fish but wanted a red that night too, and I was alone cooking that night, so I wasn’t about to open 2 bottles.  For my dinner, I went with a gorgeous piece of sashimi grade tuna, and Asian noodles in a sauce of rice vinegar, soy sauce, lime juice, and wildflower honey, and sesame seeds, carrots, and scallions.  You’re probably thinking, ok, where’s the Riesling and Gewurztraminer?  On most days, I’d be thinking the same thing. But when I crave red, I crave red, and there’s nothing I can do about it.  The red I chose was a Zweigelt.  Zweigelt, you ask?  Zwhat’s that?  Well, it’s a fruity light-to-medium-style red from Austria. Austria makes wine, you ask?  YES.  And I love Austrian wine!  In fact, in less than 2 weeks, I’m attending a Guild of Sommeliers master class on Austrian wine, and I’ll be sure to tell you all about it on my other blog, Champagne Taste.  Anyway, the Zweigelt is a cool thing and it’s good with fish dishes and other light, subtly flavored culinary concoctions.  I find that Austrian wines are very expressive, which is often the case with grapes grown in a cooler climate wine region - the grapes are able to take on the characteristics of the terroir - the soil, air, etc., and then express them to the drinker, uninhibited by other factors like excessive heat, excessive sunlight (excessive sugar and alcohol levels, etc.) - and we can learn more about the characteristics of the wine region that way!  Zweigelt is often a lot less expensive than other Austrian wines like the red Blaufrankisch and some whites including Gruner and Roter Veltliner and Riesling.  And plus, like other Austrian grapes, Zweigelt is fun to say.  It’s got mostly soft red fruit characteristics and a slightly funky, earthy nose, and a clean feel (usually) - so it’s a great red for chilling a bit and pairing with fish.  How did my pairing turn out?  FANTASTIC.

So no aggressive Zinfandels with fish, ok?  But the lighter reds - go for it.

Quail and My First Homemade Bread

Roast Quail,
Balsamic Drizzle

I miss having more time for writing on both of my blogs - I like having a busy schedule but I just miss my writing time, especially when I’m inspired to drink or create something really awesome in the kitchen and have no time to relive the moment.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that for a dinner with my sister, we’d have quail.  And I also decided that with the quail, I’d bake my first loaf of bread.  I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.  See, at the local grocery stores and butchers, I’ve seen quail available.  But the day before our dinner, I couldn’t find quail anywhere.

Fresh from the Oven

So the search for quail began.  I called probably around 20 stores on Long Island to see where I could find the quail.  The issue at that point was hardly the fact that I couldn’t seem to find the quail - it was actually the poor customer service I was receiving on my quest.  And this time, I’m not holding back on the names of the businesses.  Most locations I called had no idea what quail was.  An Uncle Giuseppe’s worker went so far as to ask me if quail is seafood.  How can customers possibly find what they’re looking for if the store employees have no idea what’s in their store’s inventory?  After much frustration with local stores, I called D’Artagnan directly, and spoke with a customer service representative - I attempted to order quail for next day delivery, but missed the cutoff by an hour.  I asked her if I could pay a penalty fee to have it shipped next day - I know how this stuff works, as I have to process sales orders for my own job - instead of answering me, she simply hung up on me.  Needless to say, finding quail was an aggravating experience.

Herbed Homemade Bread

And then I called a poultry farm in Huntington - and they had quail - and said they’d hold 4 quails for me.  See?  It’s that simple.  And that’s one of the many reasons why it’s best to shop small and seek good customer service.  So I made the drive to Huntington and was very pleased with what I saw at the farm and shop - I’ll be going back there again!

So what happened with the quail?  We trussed them, rubbed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with sea salt, and sauteed them in the Le Creuset pot for a while, and then transferred them to the oven, until they became golden brown and crispy, and then made a quick balsamic drizzle for them, and voila - perfect quail for dinner!

Langhe Nebbiolo

And about the bread - well, I found what looked like a fairly simple bread loaf recipe, and for someone who makes bread all the time, it probably is very easy - but doing this late at night after work and doing it for the first time made for a challenge and a mess of dough everywhere, but it wasn’t so bad after all - I think I was just worried that it wasn’t going to rise!  But rise it did.  And it was a beautiful and delicious loaf of bread.  The flavors I used were fresh chopped basil, thyme, and rosemary from my rooftop garden, and lemon zest - and a crust of grated parmigiano reggiano - not bad for a first attempt at baking bread!  (And for a bread loaf pan, I highly recommend Emile Henry - heat is distributed correctly and the loaf doesn’t stick to the pan.)  And the leftover bread after our dinner was used for a delicious breakfast with poached eggs - perfect.

What did we pair with our quail and herbed bread dinner?  A Langhe Nebbiolo from Piemonte - dry and bright and clean with lovely cherry and flower petal notes.  There’s an ideal pairing right there.

So, all challenges and frustrations aside, that was a fantastic dinner!

Mom’s Birthday Dinner

The wines!

I picked some really fun dishes for Mom’s birthday over the weekend - my sister made a cool appetizer of apricot with brie en croute and for the main course we had lamb chops with a dressing I made of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon, and fresh rosemary with garlic, kosher salt, and black pepper.

My dishes?  I made side dishes - stuffed tomatoes, risotto, and the cake - a New York style (or sort of German style) cheesecake.  Delicious!  I picked the wines, too - a Provence rose’, a 2007 Right Bank Bordeaux (that means it’s mostly Merlot with some Cabernet), and a Chateauneuf-du-Pape (mostly Grenache based wine with other grapes like Syrah and Mourvedre, from Southern Rhone).  The wines showed perfectly, and the dishes turned out really well.

Very easy stuffed tomatoes

The stuffed tomatoes are incredibly easy - I cut a few large vine ripened tomatoes in half, and, using a grapefruit knife, I hollow them out.  In a bowl, I mix together Italian seasoned bread crumbs, parmigiano reggiano, fresh finely chopped garlic, fresh chopped parsley, and olive oil.  I blend the olive oil into the mixture with a fork and make sure the crumbs are moist with olive oil, and then I spoon and lightly tamp down the mixture into the hollow tomato halves.  I then drizzle them with a bit more olive oil just to let them brown a bit, and bake them in the oven at 400 degrees F.  When they’r golden brown and just starting to crack a bit on top while the tomatoes are softened, take them out and enjoy them!

A cheesy, lemony risotto

The risotto I taught myself.  It’s not the easiest thing to make but if you get a feel for it, it can be quite simple.  I use 2 cups of arborio rice and my ratio is just over 3:1 liquid to rice.  I begin with a large pot and a drop of olive oil and cook an onion, chopped.  I add about 4 tbsp unsalted butter and let it melt, and using a wooden spoon, I add the 2 cups of arborio rice and stir to coat with the melted butter.  I then add, about 1 cup at a time, chicken stock, and keep the pot on fairly low heat.  I use about 6 cups of chicken stock, and then I also add the juice of 1 lemon and about 1 cup of dry white wine (this time I used a Cotes de Gascogne so not quite as dry as usual - Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio).  I add 1 cup at a time and stir so that the rice will gradually absorb the liquid.  I use about a pinch of ground black pepper, garlic powder, and about a tsp of fresh thyme leaves.  Once the rice has absorbed all liquid and is at a cooked rice consistency, I add about a cup (or slightly less) of grated parmigiano reggiano, and stir it in and remove the pot from the heat.  Once it’s integrated, I put it in a large heated bowl and top with chopped fresh parsley, and it’s done!

Cheesecake!

Let that cheesecake settle!

So about the cheesecake - there’s a story behind this one.  I was a girl scout when I was a kid until I was almost a teenager.  Somewhere around the middle of my girl scout years, I guess I was around 10 or 11, we had our first real bake-off.  I had never baked anything before - so my mom suggested her cheesecake recipe - it’s not that hard and it’s 100% from scratch, and she’d be happy to watch me, since she had made the cake so many times (I think she was given the recipe by someone named Connie that Mom worked with a long time ago, before I was born).  So the cheesecake it would be.  We’ve always called it the German cheesecake, but it’s definitely New York style (for those of you who have had a real New York cheesecake - and it’s far more fresh than most cakes that you’ll find in a New York deli or diner.  Anyway, it gets made in a spring form pan, and so there’s no graham cracker crust - in fact, there’s no crust at all.  I grease the pan with butter and coat it with plain bread crumbs.  The cake itself consists of cream cheese and butter blended together, and then add to it: sour cream, heavy cream, sugar, flour, corn starch, eggs, and vanilla, and there it is - use an electric mixer (I begin on low but bring it all the way up to the highest setting as I like loads of air in it - it can be pretty heavy for a cake so air helps!) - and 4 minutes later, pour it into the prepared pan, and bake it for almost an hour.  It’ll crack just a bit on top, but let it settle for a little while, and it;ll return to form, and carefully release the spring form sides, and it’s done!  Let it cool and place it in the refrigerator and that’s all there is to it.  Easy, right?  Well, maybe.  But I won that girl scout bake-off, and so the cheesecake was my first ever kitchen project, and a success it was.

Blueberry Pie for Labor Day

I love cooking and baking according to the seasons, and what’s fresh - it’s the best way to ensure a delicious and healthy dish, because preservatives don’t play quite so big a role when the ingredients are so fresh.  Plus, when ingredients are in season, they’re at their peak, so flavor is at maximum levels - at least that’s the way I see it.

Blueberry Pie - up close

I’m a huge fan of Ina Garten.  I learned an interesting lesson in one of her books (I believe it’s in Back to Basics but I’m not positive on that.)  Anyway, the lesson came from one of her trips to France.  She and her husband Jeffrey have homes here in New York (one in East Hampton right here in Suffolk County on Long Island, maybe an hour’s drive from where I live), one in the city, and one in Paris.  She was spending Thanksgiving in Paris and she and Jeffrey invited some friends over to their Parisian apartment, and she encountered a problem.  Some foods that are available to us here in New York are not available in Paris, at least not at Thanksgiving, when we use those ingredients to cook our Thanksgiving dinner.  I believe cranberries were among her examples.  The lesson I took from her experience which she shared with her readers is that cooking should be based on what’s in season, in order to keep it fresh and delicious.  So while Ina was able to put on an American Thanksgiving dinner in Paris, it took some major effort to find the ingredients, and some were frozen and she wasn’t happy about that (if I remember the story correctly).  And after the story, she reminds her readers to opt for the freshest ingredients, preferably those that are currently in season.

Blueberries are generally in season toward the latter part of the summer, at least that’s the case in northeastern United States.  And the true blueberries are the ones also labeled “bluet” - they have a pale colored inside flesh and dark skin (and the not-so-real blueberries have dark flesh as well - I think that’s important to remember!).

They say every good cook should have signature items, including signature cookies, cakes, and pies.  (When the holidays come around, I can’t wait to tell you all about my signature cookies - they reflect my Italian/Sicilian heritage and while they’re challenging, I love them so much and I look forward to sharing them with you.)

Since this blog post covers pie, I’ll tell you what my signature pies are.  My real signature pie is key lime pie - it’s the first pie I learned to make and now I do with without a recipe in front of me - I make it during the warmer months as I like to think of it almost like margarita in the form of dessert.  And the graham cracker crust is really quite simple to make.  If you look back a month or two ago, you’ll see the key lime pie in my 4th of July post.  My other signature pie, which I believe I covered in a post in June, is pecan pie, which I learned to make because it’s my dad’s favorite, and it seems quite difficult to find a good quality pecan pie here in New York, even in the best of American restaurants.  So I learned it, and thanks to a friend in the midwest who shared his recipe with me, the whole thing is quite easy.

“Raw"

As a child, my favorite pie was banana creme, and I’ve yet to attempt it, but I think it’ll be fairly simple - hopefully I’ll try soon and let you know about it!  My dad’s friend used to make it all the time when he came to our house when I was a kid, when the men in the family made wine in our cellar and planned fireworks shows for 4th of July parties at our house.  Eddie always brought cool desserts, including gingerbread cookies for my sister and me, Christmas cookies, apple pie, and of course my favorite, banana creme pie, and he even whipped the creme by hand.  How about that!  So yes, I’ll be learning to make banana creme pie.

But while blueberries are in season late in the summer, I decided it was time to try making blueberry pie.  I got the recipe from a dear family friend, who was also my piano teacher when I was growing up.  But the recipe didn’t include a specific pie crust recipe, so I turned to my sister, who makes an outrageously great apple pie.  That crust is fantastic, so that’s the one I wanted.  But instead of doing a complete cover crust, I opted for lattice, which I think looks nice on a richly colored berry pie filling.

Fresh out of the oven!

The filling includes about 5 cups of fresh blueberries (the real ones, bluet!), sugar, flour, and cinnamon, and once it’s in the pie crust, some lemon juice and tiny pieces of butter sprinkled over the berries.  The crust includes flour, shortening, salt, and cold water.  The crust is completely done by hand, and I doubled the recipe, because I wanted to ensure that the entire bottom crust would cover the Emile Henri pie dish, and also to make strips (cut with a pastry cutting wheel from Williams-Sonoma) long enough to make a proper lattice top for the pie.  Without giving away Lauren’s pie crust recipe, I’ll say that the shortening gets “cut” into the flour with butter knives, which takes a bit of time but it’s worth it, and when adding the water one tablespoon at a time, it gets blended in gently with a fork.  Do it by hand, she said, and not with the food processor.  You want to know how your dough feels throughout the process.  TRUE.

I used the butcher block as my surface and covered it with a bit of flour so as not to let it stick, and then rolled it out with a wooden rolling pin, and carefully, I got it quite thin, which is essential, and placed it very carefully in the pie dish.  I repeated the rolling for the second crust, except this one I cut into strips with the pastry cutting wheel (which works really well!).  I filled the crust with the blueberry mixture which was already starting to sort of macerate.  I carefully placed the strips of dough into a lattice which my mom helped me weave like a basket (since it was my first time doing lattice, 4 hands were better than two).

I then added a bit to it - I made an egg wash and brushed it on only the lattice and crust around the edges and not on the berries - and then sprinkled the whole pie with cinnamon sugar.  Perfect, I thought.

Into the oven for 45 minutes at 425 degrees F.

And voila!  A perfect blueberry pie emerged from the oven, bubbling around the edges and looking “golden brown” - I took so many pictures, I was so pleased with the way it looked.

Blueberry Pie with Vanilla Bean Gelato

And it was delicious, too.  It was served with a scoop of Talenti Tahitian vanilla bean gelato, and the sweet/tartness of the pie, the slight saltiness of the crust, and the sweetness of the gelato were a perfect match.

I was asked what would I pair with that - well, I’d say one of my favorite dessert wines - Alcyone late harvest Tannat from Uruguay, with its dark fruit and chocolate characteristics.

In all, I don’t think the whole prep time took longer than an hour, making this one of the less complicated and time consuming desserts in my repertoire.  And I’m pretty sure this will become my signature berry pie.  It’s too beautiful and delicious not to!

Gazpacho

It’s been a long, busy work week.  We just polished off two bottles of wine tonight (a Bergerac blanc and a 2009 Pauillac) - and somehow it’s 2.30am, I’m listening to Steely Dan and Bottle Shock is on in the background, and I’m sitting up in bed with my glasses on while writing about gazpacho.

In the summer I rarely eat any soup - I think of soup with the cooler months, with ingredients like lentils, pumpkin, sage, squash, and things like seafood and meat and one of my favorites - mushrooms.  As I write blog posts in the cooler months, you might figure out that I’m completely obsessed with mushrooms of all kinds, but mostly the very textured, dark, bold flavored types.  But anyway, I decided I felt like a chilled soup was in order this week - and I picked gazpacho - I haven’t had one in ages.  And I went with Ina Garten’s recipe.

Some of the ingredients include coarsely chopped tomatoes, red bell pepper, red onion (my advice - back off on this one just a bit - a whole red onion is extremely intense on day 1 of the soup - a bit more tame on day 2 but be careful - you may want to opt for half an onion or play it extra safe with a large shallot - and definitely go with a finer chop on this!), cucumber (which helped cool the palate with all the other flavors going on), minced garlic (again, go easy on this one - she calls for 3 cloves - but probably smaller than the cloves I used - because the flavor is powerful when garlic is raw!), tomato juice, good quality olive oil, white wine vinegar, kosher salt, and freshly ground black pepper.  I think that was everything I used.  If I were to add anything, it would be some fresh parsley or cilantro.  Use the food processor for the vegetables for sure, and let it sit covered in the refrigerator overnight, the flavors marry well and I enjoyed it more on day 2 actually.

I served it alongside seared chicken breasts and a simple salad of mixed dark greens, chopped pecans, finely grated parmigiano reggiano, and my basic salad dressing that takes me literally one minute to whisk and prepare - olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, honey (I prefer wildflower over clover but the choice is yours), black pepper, kosher salt, and a dash of garlic powder.  The entire salad preparation takes no more than 5 minutes tops.

And the wine I picked was a 2009 Chateauneuf-du-Pape - in case you’ve heard of it or tried it but don’t know much about Chateauneuf, it means “new house of the Pope,” lots of history there worth reading about, based near Avignon in the Southern Rhone Valley region of France, where Grenache is the dominant grape, often blended with Syrah and Mourvedre (as was the case here), but may include up to (I believe) 13 different grapes.  Chateauneuf is a bit on the pricey side but if you find one you love, believe me when I say it’s worth every cent.  When properly executed, they’re a great blend of fruit, spice, and earthy notes, a rich deep red color, and enough acidity to pair well with lots of foods from cheese platters to tomato soup to duck to ribeye steak.  (I find that lots of people have heard of Chateauneuf but don’t know what it is, except that it’s a fairly expensive French wine - read up a bit on it and start tasting!)

So, why did I choose Chateauneuf?  Well, I would have chosen a Spanish wine to pair with a soup of Spanish origin like gazpacho, except that, truth be told, I already had the Chateauneuf open, and fortunately, Chateauneuf is made of similar grapes to Spanish reds, particularly those made up of Grenache and/or Mourvedre (in Spain they’re called Garnacha and Monastrell and while they’re quite different in Spain from the way they’re used in France, I still love the elegance and spice and lovely texture of these wines).  Anyway, it was a nice pairing and a fun thing to enjoy on a summer evening on the porch.

Gazpacho is simple to make - just find a dependable recipe, don’t use to much onion or it won’t show enough tomato characteristics, and I think the cucumber is a must - it works so well since the soup is chilled.  I don’t think it took me more than 20 minutes to make the whole thing.  And I do recommend making it the day before you intend to consume it - let the flavors work together overnight.