Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho
the SimiLkameen Valley is famous for its tomatoes. They shine in chef Nick Atkins's chilled soup, perfect for days when the temperature soars — as it does so often here in the South Okanagan. Fresh cucumber, peppers, onions and spices add complexity, while the basil oil and salsa fresca garnishes transform this gazpacho into something extraordinary.
PAIRING: Lariana Cellars Viognier
Green Bell Pepper 1
Day-Old Bread such as herb focaccia, 4 thick slices, divided
Heirloom Tomatoes 3 lbs, cored, seeded and chopped
English Cucumber
1, peeled, seeded and roughly chopped
Garlic 2 cloves
Red Onion
½ , roughly chopped
Salt 1 to 2 tsp
Black Pepper 1 tsp
Ground Cumin 1 tsp
Worcestershire Sauce 2 Tbs
Sherry Vinegar 1 Tbs
Tabasco Sauce 5 drops Juice of ½ Lemon
1 PREHEAT oven to 350°F.
2 PREHEAT a flame grill over high heat.
3 ROAST green pepper over open flame until charred on all sides.
4 PLACE pepper in a bowl, then cover with plastic wrap and set aside for 4 minutes. Remove burnt skin, stem and seeds.
5 CUT 2 slices of bread into 1-inch cubes.
6 ARRANGE on a baking sheet and toast for 3–5 minutes, turning often, until just crisp on the outside but soft on the inside. Set aside.
7 PLACE the roasted green pepper and all remaining ingredients, including the remaining 2 slices of bread, into a blender and blend until combined. If needed, adjust seasoning.
8 CHILL soup in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Soup can be made the day before serving. Croutons can be stored in an air-tight container until ready to serve.
Indeed, it has been life-changing for many of the chefs on these pages. So many of them have relocated from big cities and celebrated kitchens, drawn to this region by the incredible abundance of what grows here. That could mean the cattle that graze the grasslands of the Thompson River Valley, the freshwater fish of the Shuswap, the organic tomatoes and peppers of the Similkameen, or the apples and apricots of the Okanagan.
And the vines are everywhere, heavy with grapes, because this is wine country, too. The Thompson-Okanagan is a land of varied landscapes formed by cataclysmic events, volcanos, glaciers and raging rivers that carved steep valleys out of rock. It is also a land of varied climates that range from cool, green Lake Country in the north to the blistering desert of the South Okanagan Valley just 150 kilometres away.
The region comprises three valleys: two river valleys — the Similkameen and Thompson — and the Okanagan Valley, where a series of lakes travel north from the US border. Some 12,000 years ago, the whole area was buried under ice and that era of glaciation has left behind the kinds of mineral, rock, sand, silt and other deposits that make soil scientists giddy with excitement. Not surprisingly, then, this has long been farming and ranching country.
Even today, while cities like Kamloops and Kelowna grow bigger and bigger, more than eight percent of the region is still locked in the Agricultural Land Reserve.
But long before the first orchard was planted, this was for millennia home to the Syilx, Nlaka'pamux and Secwépemc peoples who fished, hunted and foraged here. Europeans began to arrive in the early 1800s, drawn first by the fur trade and later by gold, especially during the Fraser River Gold Rush that began in 1858. These newcomers started farming and ranching and set up shop to supply optimistic prospectors. In 1859, three Oblate missionaries led by Father Charles Pandosy established the first European settlement in what is now Kelowna, where they also planted the region's first grapevines. By the dawn of the twentieth century, steamboats plied the waters of Okanagan Lake, transporting orchard fruits to the national railway and bringing tourists down to the beaches of the sunny Okanagan.
For a long time, this was “peaches and beaches” country, with just a handful of wineries growing mainly hybrid grapes like Vidal and Maréchal Foch. Then, in the 1980s, a series of international trade agreements opened the market for wine. The federal government paid growers to tear out their hybrid grapes and replace them with Vitis vinifera, the noble grapes that go into the world's great wines. Now there are more than two hundred wineries across the region, with more opening all the time.
And as the wineries began to win international awards and plant more and more acres of vines, the food scene grew alongside.
Mission Hill Family Estate Winery led the charge, winning BC's first international award for wine in 1994 and opening one of the region's first winery restaurants in 2002. Owner Anthony von Mandl was inspired by what Robert Mondavi was doing in the Napa Valley, where the patriarch of California wine combined wine, art, music, food and the fine craft of living well. That quickly became the model for the Okanagan Valley, too, as winery after winery opened its own restaurant, more stand-alone restaurants followed and chefs started leaving larger cities for a place where abundance is simply a way of life.
Now each part of this region is creating its own culinary culture. The Similkameen Valley is still mainly farm country, a deep, narrow,