Gazpacho

I've been making Delia's version of gazpacho for some time and it's pretty good, but I find it a little acidic for my taste, so I've used the recipe from my "Fresh Spanish" cookbook this time with a few variations.  So far, it's tasting very good, but I'll need to see what it's like when it's chilled.

In the meantime, here's the recipe...

Ingredients

For the soup

1.4 kg Vine ripened tomatoes, as ripe as you can get them

2 slices of white bread

1 red pepper, cored and de seeded

4 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

½ teaspoon Tabasco sauce

1 level teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

To serve

⅓ cucumber

½ red onion

2 slices bread

1 tablespoon finely chopped red pepper

Method

Cut a cross in the bottom of the tomatoes, then put them in a bowl and pour over boiling water, soak for 1 minute and then drain and cover in cold water.  Peel the skin off the tomatoes, cut them in half and deseed them, putting the seeds into a sieve suspended over a bowl to catch the juice.

Put the tomatoes into the food processor or blender and add the rest of the ingredients except the bread.  Make sure you get as much juice from the tomato seeds as you can, then soak the bread slices in the juice and add this to the blender.  You may need to do this in to stages depending in the size of the blender or food processor.  Put the soup into a large bowl and chill for at least 4 hours.

Make the croutons by cutting the bread into 5mm cubes and fry in hot olive oil until golden.  Peel the red onion and chop finely.  Peel and chop the cucumber into fine dice.  Serve in bowls with the croutons, onion, cucumber and red pepper piled into the middle of each bowl.  It tastes even better with some freshly make ciabatta.