Chilled Spanish Gazpacho Soup

Where does the time go – it is a little while since I have blogged – but forgive me – I had a little holiday myself in the New Forest last week with some friends from Perth, Australia.  They have been here two years running and they invited us to join them at a beautiful cottage.  So now, back to the Cortijo for more visitors and lots more cooking!

It is sweltering and I was deciding on a starter for last nights guests and I thought “what could be better than Gazpacho”.  I adore it, and it never fails to amaze me how many people think they don’t like cold soup until they taste this.  Even better, if you are slimming and leave out the olive oil it contains NO calories at all!  It takes no cooking at all and no stock but you will need an electric blender – I don’t really see why you couldn’t use a juicer in place of the blender, and just crush in the garlic cloves afterwards.  You can make it the day before if you know you will be busy, or just literally make it in the late morning, chill it for an hour or so, and then serve with some ice cubes for a wonderful summer lunch.   For an extra kick for a dinner party put an egg cup full of vodka in at the end, though it really is not necessary, just fun!

You can also add a bit of Tabasco or chilli if you want to make it a little spicy.

For 4-6 people depending on portion size

700g very ripe tomatoes – just don’t bother with those horrible hard English salad tomatoes that they flog you in polystyrene packets – buy the best you can afford – vine ones would be truly gorgeous, but just good looking ripe ones will be fine.

10cm piece of cucumber, peeled and chopped

2 or 3 spring onions or you could even try red onion

2/3 cloves of garlic crushed

Half a red or green pepper

1 heaped tablespoon chopped fresh basil, marjoram or thyme – whatever you can get

4 tablespoons of olive oil (omit if you are watching you weight)

1-2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

275 ml still mineral water

Black pepper and sea salt

Nearly every recipe calls for you to skin the tomatoes – I never bother, it is too much trouble!  But if you can be bothered, then do so in boiling water for a few minutes and skin them.  Then roughly chop and place with the rest of the ingredients.  Blend in your machine until as smooth as possible (this is where skinning the tomatoes pays dividends but it will make absolutely no difference to the taste, only the consistency).  Then you can just stir in as much or little water as you like to thin it out, whatever you think but certainly no more than 275ml.

You can garnish with a little chopped onion, pepper, cucumber and hard boiled egg, all finely chopped.  Throw in a few croutons if you wish, but again, not really necessary.

Absolutely divine!