The Capsule Pantry: Gazpacho 19 Ways
The Capsule Pantry: Gazpacho 19 Ways
Chilled soup recipes for the last days of summer
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Praise the Lord for tomato season! If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, you’ll be in the thick of tomato heaven right now and we’re all the better for it, IMO.
One of my favorite recipes for the hot late summer days is gazpacho. That chilled southern Spanish soup that is both refreshing and generous in style and flavor.
Gazpacho has become synonymous with “fancy” these days. I’m talking shot glasses of the stuff served at nearly every wedding I’ve attended in the last decade.
But its roots are not fancy in the slightest. Like so many excellent dishes, gazpacho was born from necessity - a way to use up stale bread and overripe tomatoes. It turns the humble into the heavenly.
I’ve gone for an original “purist” recipe here, gleaned from my trips to Andalucia (and many, many gazpachos made and consumed over the years) but with plenty of adaptations to make it your own / fit whatever you have in your fridge and store cupboard.
The original recipe
This recipe is best made beforehand because a) the flavours will develop and b) you can chill the soup in the fridge. If you’ve forgotten that lunch is supposed to be in 20 minutes however, you can make the soup right off the bat and it will be no less delicious.
For 4 people
6 good quality medium-sized tomatoes (or a similar weight of other tomatoes such as cherry or beef) chopped into chunks
1 red bell pepper chopped into chunks
1 cucumber peeled and chopped into chunks
1 thick slice stale white bread soaked in a small amount of water
2 small cloves garlic minced
Sherry vinegar (approx 2 tablespoons)
Quality extra virgin olive oil (approx 1/4 cup / 60ml)
Coarse sea salt
Get your blender or hand blender out of the cupboard.
Optional step: If I’m not using cherry tomatoes, I like to skin my tomatoes for a smoother gazpacho. Score an X in the bottom of each and place them in boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove and peel the skin away, starting from the X.
Put the tomatoes, cucumber, pepper, bread and garlic in the blender (or a bowl if using a hand blender).
Whizz until roughly blended - just 30 seconds or so will do.
Now it’s time to add the oil. The point here is to emulsify the oil with the other ingredients to produce a smooth, homogenized soup. Start the blender and drip in the oil a little at a time. You’re looking at using something around a quarter cup in all, but this is when your taste buds will come into play. Some like more, some like less (I err on the side of less).
Around half way through adding the oil, add the sherry vinegar and salt. With the salt, use just a pinch to start. Add 3/4-1 tablespoon of the vinegar, try the soup and adjust as you see fit. Keep on tasting. If it needs more oil, more vinegar, more salt, or even more garlic, stick it in there.
You want to blend for at least five minutes whilst adding the oil and adjusting, to ensure you have something super smooth and rich. Add ice cold water if you want to thin it out a little.
Serve with a drizzle of olive oil or with some of the toppings below. You could put bread on the side, but this is a surprisingly filling soup (especially if you garnish it with chopped egg) so you might not need anything more.
Adaptations
Cucumber
The purist in me would never want to forgo the cucumber in gazpacho, but I didn’t have any to hand last time I made it and it turned out delicious anyway. So use the cucumber, or don’t. It’s up to you.
Tomatoes
Although I would recommend making Gazpacho when tomatoes are in season (out-of-season tomatoes make for a crap soup), you could use good quality canned tomatoes during other times of the year.
Peppers
You could add depth of flavour to the soup by roasting or broiling the peppers before whacking them in. Jarred roasted peppers also work well.
If you don’t have peppers to hand, don’t worry, you can easily make gazpacho without them, just add another tomato in there.
Alternatively, you could forgo the tomatoes entirely and make red pepper gazpacho instead (roasted peppers is best for this).
Bread
If you don’t have any bread - or don’t want to eat it - you could make gazpacho without it. It’s a lighter style soup and will of course be less filling, but no less delicious.
Toppings
Gazpacho can be garnished with as little as a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. But why stop there?
Traditional toppings for gazpacho are chopped boiled egg and slices of jamón (Spanish cured ham) but I’ve also included tiny diced and cooked chorizo, salami and prosciutto in the past. Some crunchy croutons could add texture. Or try crumbled feta - or another fresh cheese. Even small chunks of nectarines or strawberries can be delicious too.
Check your fridge and storecupboard and get creative with what you have to hand.
Vinegar
Good sherry vinegar can be hard to find so if you’re not able to procure some, you can swap out for either balsamic (the proper stuff, not the glaze) or good quality white wine or apple cider vinegar. Be mindful however that wine and cider vinegars are stronger in flavour and acid than sherry vinegar so you may want to reduce how much you use in the recipe.
No blender? No problem
Chunky gazpacho is A Thing. I personally like to roast the tomatoes and peppers beforehand for chunky gazpacho, but you can keep them raw if you prefer.
Mash some of the tomatoes down into a paste. Add the finely chopped tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Don’t soak the bread in water, instead chop into chunks and shove it in.
You’ll need less olive oil for chunky gazpacho - a generous glug should do it - and possibly less vinegar too, depending on your taste. You’ll also likely want to thin the soup out with some ice cold water or tomato juice too, otherwise, it might turn out more like Panzanella.
Use only one raw clove of garlic in this recipe and paste it using either a garlic mincer or (my preferred method) roughly chop it on a board, throw on a touch of coarse sea salt and use the side of a large kitchen knife to scrape it into a paste.
What to do with leftover gazpacho
You can freeze gazpacho in batches.
Try spreading it on toast and top it with a fried egg for breakfast or lunch.
Turn it into a dip for nachos (thin it out, or add some Mexican spicing like chopped chipotle chilies)
Stir it into pasta.