Recipe: Gazpacho Soup

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:58:08 +0000

As it’s probably been noted - it gets pretty hot in most of Japan in the summer, so what could be better than a nice bowl of chilled soup? Over the years I’ve come to quite like gazpacho soup, made famous to my generation in the UK from the comedy ‘Red Dwarf’, where the character Rimmer ruins his career by asking the chef to ‘heat it up’ whilst at the captain’s table. So then here is a recipe for gazpacho soup. The soup itself is Spanish in origin, so you can expect a lot of juicy ripe fruit in there.

Anyway, I’ve digressed already, this soup is prepared chilled from fresh ingredients, and should be chilled in a fridge before serving - it tastes very good after being chilled overnight. To make it, you really just need that fridge, some ingredients, and a blender. One thing I like about Gazpacho soup is that it’s difficult to say it’s wrong since there are so many permutations of it based on local recipes (a bit like Miso Shiru!).

For mine I get the following ingredients and roughly chop them into a bowl - this should make 6+ servings:

500g chopped Italian tomatoes
300g of bell peppers
200g of cucumber
juice of 1 lemon
50g of celery
5 cloves of garlic
100g of red onion
30g parsley
pinch of oregano

That goes into (and essentially fills) my blender! Give it a whirl around a bit until it’s broken down a bit, then add:

100g virgin olive oil

after a bit more time you can add some of the following to taste:

salt
pepper
balsamic vinegar
pepper sauce

You can really blend it as far as you like - I’ve tried leaving some more chunks in there, and I’ve tried taking it all the way down to a thick liquid, and it tastes good most ways, so you can’t really over blend it. You can also add some ingredients at the end just diced if you prefer.

Variations

There’s lots of ways you can do Gazpacho, adding a few things - I quite like adding a few olives, or sometimes a piman (a smaller Japanese non-spicy pepper) from my mini-garden. I’ve done some with several drops of Tabasco and it’s actually ended up really quite good for accompanying a BBQ, with that added spice and a drink. If you want it less spicy, you could add some cold boiled potato which would also thicken it up.

Also, if you don’t think you’ve got enough liquid in there after a minute or so of blending, you can add some tomato puree or juice.

Please post good variations in the comments!

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Kirsty Girl — 2011-07-27

This looks really good. Methinks I will be making this for lunch tomorrow.

gurahamu — 2011-07-28

It’s fairly quick n easy to make (just that principle chopping time) and if you have a small garden, you can make use of veg from there, which can be nice.

No 2 soups can be the same

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 00:13:45 +0000

This is a weak post. I know it’s a weak post. But I’m going to do it anyway.

Today was hot. Hot and humid, and I walked all the way from Maru building near Tokyo Station, to Ginza.

Did I mention it was hot and humid?

Anyway, by the time I got back to Maru, I’d got a little hungry and decided to head over to Tokyo Soup Stock for some lunch. I was feeling pretty hungry and noticed that Chili Con Carne was on the menu this month, and it’s usually really good. I ordered then the ‘Soup Stock Set’, which is 2 regular cartons of soup and some rice or bread. The counter person asked me what I wanted - ‘Soup stock set with bread’. ‘Which soup?’ ‘Chili Con Carne for both please.’ ‘I’m sorry, we can’t do that.’ ‘Do what? Chili Con Carne is on the menu isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, but with this set, you must have 2 different soups’. ‘Why?’ ‘…’

So I ended up with chili and a pork stroganof.

I did say it was a weak post, but no weaker than that rule. I think I’ll try again next week and see whether I just got a rigid employee on a bad day. The exchange went on a little longer than I put here, but I think you get the point.

They never tell me I can’t have two butadons in Yoshinoya.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Luke — 2004-07-09

Maybe we should band together and keep asking them everyday. If they don’t offer it just go away :)

Soup on Nanikore

Recipe: Gazpacho Soup

Original Comments

No 2 soups can be the same

Original Comments