Gazpacho


A summer treat, a lovely cold soup on a hot day. It'll never taste as great as it does in Spain but hey we can dream.

Ingredients to serve four

1/3 Cucumber
1 Green pepper
Tomato juice - half pint
A few ripe tomatoes
Small onion or a shallot
Red wine vinegar - 4 tablespoons
1 clove garlic
Olive Oil - 4 tablespoons
Stale bread 10 cm of French stick, or two slices of white bread - soaked in water then squeezed out
1/2 tsp Paprika
Seasoning

Some bread to make croutons

Method
Peel the Cucumber, skin the tomatoes. From here it's a bit like blending a salad, combine all in a liquidizer or blender then wizz until you find the right consistency adding a little more vinegar or oil to you think it's just right. Add more tomato juice to get the right colour and consitancy.

Push it through a fine sieve discarding any course bits

Serve with some Cucumber sliced up. Last time I had this in Spain it came with half a boiled egg sliced on top.

For croutons, melt a large knob of butter in a frying pan on a fairly low heat, add a clove of crushed garlic, cut the edges off the bread and add to the pan and turn a couple of times over until lovely and browned.