22 Feb Recipe: Tomato Gazpacho

Refreshing gazpacho is perfect summer food, writes Roberta Muir. You can make a jug of it to keep in the fridge for cooling, healthy snacks.

It makes a delicious start to a summer meal, is great in shot glasses for parties, and is perfect with an ice-cold Manzanilla Sherry. If you don’t have time for all the peeling, seeding and dicing, just throw all the vegetables into the blender and use the fried bread for garnish – it’ll still look good and taste great! And if you don’t have Sherry vinegar use a mild red wine vinegar, but start with half the quantity and add extra to taste as it may be stronger.

Serves 8 as a starter

Ingredients

1 clove garlic

Salt flakes, to taste

6 slices white sourdough bread

½ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for pan-frying

1kg ripe red tomatoes

2 red capsicums

2 Lebanese cucumbers

2 red onions

¼ cup Sherry vinegar

1 cup water, more or less

Method

Peel garlic, slice in half, discard the centre ‘germ’ and chop roughly. Place in a blender with ½ teaspoon salt and 4 slices of the bread and process until crumbed. With the motor running, slowly add the oil until fully incorporated. Remove from blender and set aside.

Quarter all except 1 tomato. Peel and seed the reserved tomato, dice finely and set aside.

Halve capsicums and remove seeds and membranes. Peel and finely dice half a capsicum and set aside.

Peel and halve cucumbers. Seed half a cucumber, dice finely and set aside.

Peel and halve onions. Dice one half finely and set aside.

Reserving the finely diced portions for garnish, place the remaining tomato, capsicum, cucumber and onion in the blender and process until smooth; you may need to work in 2 batches, depending on the size of your blender.

Add bread paste and process again.

Add vinegar and process briefly to combine.

Refrigerate until well chilled, preferably overnight.

Meanwhile, discard the crusts from the remaining bread and cut it into small cubes.

Heat a frying pan, add a drizzle of oil and fry the bread until golden and crisp.

Tip onto a plate to cool, then store in an airtight container until needed.

Blitz soup one more time in a blender, then pass through a fine strainer, pressing down with the back of a ladle to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard solids.

Stir water into the soup, adding more or less depending on the consistency you prefer.

Taste and add extra vinegar or salt if needed. Return to the refrigerator until well chilled.

Serve topped with a scattering of diced vegetables and toasted bread cubes.

You’ll find a print-friendly version of this recipe and a step-by-step video here.

Enjoy Spanish flavours? Take a look at Roberta’s Online Spanish Cooking Class  and use coupon ‘Child’ this month to save 50%.