After empanadas, let’s move to the other side of the ocean, in another spanish speaking country…Spain! And since it’s summer, what could be better than a refreshing and tasteful gazpacho??

 

Now, as every local dish, there are several recipes that you will find, and all of them will claim to be the “official one”, but since there is no easy way to actually find out which one is the real one, you’ll just have to find the one you prefer the most.

After trying some, here is my version of the “real gazpacho”.

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Ingredients:

• 300 gr of tomatoes
• 1/4 of a cucumber
• 1 red pepper
• 1/4 white onion
• 1 garlic shallot
• 3 spoons of bread crumbs
• 2 spoons of vinegar
• 3 spoons of extra virgin olive oil
• salt
• black pepper
• 150 ml of cold water

How to do it:

Wash all the vegetables and start cutting the tomatoes in 4. Put them in the blender. Remove the outer skin of the cucumber, and also the internal seeds if they are too big, cut it in smaller pieces and add it in the blender with the tomatoes.

Add 150 ml of water and whiz until smooth.

Cut the red pepper in half, remove the seeds and put it in the blender. Add the chopped onion and the garlic – now here’s the deal: are you planning on having a romantic dinner? Maybe it’s better to add just a very small piece of onion and half of a garlic shallot. Are you planning on having a guys only evening watching a football match? Then you can probably be more generous 🙂

Blend again until smooth. Add the breadcrumbs, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and taste it to make sure that it’s good. An important step now: you have to filter it to make sure that it’s as smooth as possible, then keep it in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.

When you’re ready to serve it, mix it, put it in small glass (like the ones for finger food for example), add some olive oil on top and some lemon thyme to garnish, it adds an extra flavor which is just amazing!!

You can also prepare some toasted bread to go with it, cut few slices of fresh bread, spread some garlic on top of it, add olive oil, salt and oregan and put it in the oven under the grill for few minutes, until it becomes crunchy.