Gazpacho

Hi, this recipe is from the '1000 Recipe Cook Book edited by Isabelle Barrett and Jane Harrop' on page 17. 

Overall, I didn't really like this Gazpacho recipe, my Mum said tasted like a cold tomato sauce, which obviously it was going to taste a bit like, but we didn't really get anything else from it. I think next time, I would add in a tin of butter beans, like in my Herby Tomato and Bean Soup, as that tasted nice. In fact, the above recipe for hot tomato soup, if left to go cold would make a nice Gazpacho. 

As well as this, I think this recipe wasn't so nice because all the ingredients were raw and just blended together, rather than cooking down the onion, tomatoes etc... first then cooling it and blending because often cooking just gives it a bit more flavour. Also, I would suggest adding a bit of stock to the soup as well, especially if you do add the butter beans, as it will need a bit more liquid anyway and if you don't, switch out half of the tomato juice for some, it will add extra flavour and salt to the dish. 

Hope this is helpful,

Hazel :)

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Dietary Info:

-Vegan

-Vegetarian

-Gluten Free

-Dairy Free

-Nut Free

-Starter

-Main Meal (if served with bread/carbohydrate source)

Serves: 4 

Ingredients:

-350g tomatoes, skinned {I didn't peel/skin the tomatoes.}

-1 small cucumber, skinned {Although I did peel the cucumber, it would've been fine to not peel it as some green bits would've looked pretty.}

-1 small onion {I used a brown onion, but red would be fine too.}

-1/2 green pepper

-1/2 red pepper {I used a whole red pepper.}

-2 celery stalks

-1 garlic clove, peeled

-300ml tomato juice {I used same quantity of tomato passata.}

-50ml cooking oil {I left this out as mine was very liquid-y.}

-25ml vinegar {I used red wine vinegar and would recommend any vinegar that is not malt vinegar for this dish: cyder vinegar, balsamic vinegar, white wine vinegar etc... all fine.}

-salt and pepper 

-3-4 drops Tabasco sauce {I substituted for a couple of pinches of chilli flakes.}

Method:

1: Roughly chop all the vegetables and reserve about one quarter for garnish.

2: Put the remaining vegetables with the garlic in an electric blender. Add the tomato juice, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper to taste and Tabasco sauce and blend to a puree. Chill.

3: Blend the reserved vegetables for a few seconds only and add to the soup.  {I didn't blend them as I didn't want mush on mush, just served them atop the soup with some chilli flakes and bread.}

4: Serve chilled.

While you're here...

I have a Pinterest for all my recipes, where you can save them to boards for the future and categorise them into different types of recipe e.g Sunday Dinners, picnic ideas etc. My account is @hazellikestocook, or find the link below. Also, I have a whole blog post explaining this in more detail here and https://hazelscookingandbakingblog.blogspot.com/2021/02/pinterest.html. 

https://pin.it/5xDvARk - my profile

This recipe:

https://pin.it/1flXZr2