Perfect Gazpacho

Based on a recipe from the Guardian with a touch of Gordon Ramsay

The gazpacho is a classic of the genre: refreshing, and full of ripe, summery flavours. It is, essentially, an Andalusian peasant dish designed to stretch cheap ingredients to their absolute limit. Early recipes used only a mixture of bread, olive oil, garlic and water -tomatoes and peppers, imports from the New World, came much later to the party. Gazpacho is sometimes called "a salad soup", and as any good salad, it can be made with whatever happens to be ripe at the time.

Serves 4

• 100g slightly stale crusty white bread, soaked in cold water for 20 mins
• 1kg very ripe tomatoes, diced
• 1 ripe red pepper and 1 ripe green pepper, deseeded and diced
• 1 medium cucumber, peeled and diced
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
• 150ml extra virgin oil
• 2 Tbsp sherry vinegar
• Salt, to taste

Directions

Mix the diced tomatoes, peppers and cucumber with the crushed garlic and olive oil in the bowl of a food processor or blender. Squeeze out the bread, tear it roughly into chunks, and add to the mixture.

Blend until smooth, then add the salt and vinegar to taste and stir well.

Pass the mixture through a fine sieve, then cover and refrigerate until well chilled.

Serve with garnishes of your choice: diced black olives and small pieces of cucumber and pepper.Among other favourite garnishes are spring onions, chunks of crusty bread, cubes of spanish ham or diced hardboiled egg. For a lighter version, simply add mint or parsley leaves.

Cooking Notes

If you have difficulty of finding some really red ripe tomatoes, Gordon Ramsay recommends to add some tomato concentrate to the soup: a tablespoon for every 700g of tomatoes. Similarly, you can use red wine vinegar instead of a sherry one. But the real secret of great gazpacho is good olive oil, and lots of it.