One of our favourite summer dishes is gazpacho, the best cold soup ever. Come August the farm is usually producing tons of different kinds of tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions and bell peppers and we keep trying to find ways of using up all of those fresh flavours. There's no greater luxury than being able to cook with ingredients freshly picked from the garden.
Our version goes like this:
You'll need:
- 3-4 pounds of tomatoes (any kind - we usually mix several types)
- 1 green bell pepper cored and seeded
- 1 cucumber sliced and seeded (you don't have to peel it - the strong flavour is actually from the seeds)
- 1 purple onion (or 2 small ones)
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1/4 cup of white wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 tablespoon black freshly grounded black pepper
- 1/2 tablespoon salt
- fresh mint leaves as decoration
- a food processor
We put each separate vegetable ingredient in a cup and use the food processor to chop everything up in turn. You'll need several cups for the tomato.
The visual effect of adding each chopped ingredient to a big glass bowl is amazing. If you want to impress guests mix everything up just before serving - it looks gorgeous.
After you do that, season with the vinegar, olive oil and pepper, sprinkle some mint leaves and enjoy!
To be completely honest, it will taste even better if you mix everything up 2 hours before serving and leave it in the fridge, but it's a little less spectacular to watch.
