Gazpacho andaluz
Warning:
This is a work in progress. It's how I made gazpacho the first and only time I tried, after an inspiring trip to Seville. I was working off a combination of two recipes, using different equipment from what was recommended, and I'm afraid it went wrong. I put in too much vinegar. BUT - don't let that put you off. I'll leave the amount of vinegar to your discretion and I'm sure it'll work brilliantly.
Essential equipment:
You'll need two large bowls, plus a blender of some sort (I used a hand-held stalk blender, but the goblet type is probably better), and preferably also a mouli or food mill.
Servings: 4 as a starter
Time: Well, it took me ages, but I guess I could get it down to 40 minutes with practice.
- 4 large (but not huge) tomatoes
- 100g cucumber
- ½ onion
- 2 small or one large green pepper
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 80g bread crumb from a good white loaf (weighed after crusts have been removed)
- 60ml olive oil (4 generous tbsp)
- a dash or two of wine vinegar (see warning above)
- ¼ tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp salt
- Tear the bread up into small chunks, put it in a bowl and cover with cold water. Leave it to soak while you're doing the next bit.
- Chop all the veggies up fairly small.
- Blend them to a purée.
- This is where your mouli comes into its own. Pour the purée into your mouli (which, of course, is standing over a large bowl), turn the handle gently, and you will be left with a bowl full of smooth pinkish liquid, and a mouli full of skins and seeds. If you haven't got a mouli you'll have to rub it through a sieve, which is much more tedious. Or you could leave all the skins in, of course.
- Now get the blender out again, and whizz up the bread with a bit of your soup until it's smooth. What I did at this point was add the bread purée to the rest of the soup, with the oil, salt, cumin and vinegar, and whizz it all up until the oil was homogeneously incorporated. If you're using a goblet blender I'm afraid you're on your own here (but you could let me know how it goes if you're feeling charitable).
- Now, this is the bit I don't understand. Both of my recipes said at this point that I should add some cold water. But there was plenty of soup there already, and the texture was just how I wanted it not too thick, not too thin. So I ignored that and just put it in the fridge until it was time to eat.
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