I first came across Gazpacho in Snaffles in the early seventies. There this Spanish classic chilled soup was getting its first airing via the books of Elizabeth David.
There it had a certain cachet but on the whole I think that Irish punters had a fairly severe distrust of a chilled soup, it somehow didn’t mix well with grey Dublin winter evenings.
I have had a bit of a love hate relationship with the soup since then.
Last year, on truly warm summer evenings where we can see the Spanish Pyrenees from the terrace seemed a good moment to give it a try so I made it a couple of times, in my usual fashion, liquidizing onions garlic peppers cucumber and tomato and seasoning these with olive oil, vinegar and salt and pepper. I used to keep some of these ingredients aside, dice them finely and add them at the end for texture.
Now while it was a fine chilled soup it wasn’t fantastic so I decided to back to the drawing board, in this case Sam Clark’s Moro Spanish Cookbook.
He was, I was surprised to notice, particularly fussy and meticulous with something which essentially was a simple peasant dish.
It turns out of course that he was spot on and his version of Gazpacho (with a few tweaks) has become a bit of a standard on the terrace for warm nights.
It is without doubt the most refreshing dish for these Mediterraneanevenings.
Here is my twist on Sam Clarks soup- (be warned it involves three different machines for pureeing- not something I would ever advocate unless it was worth it.)

Ingredients:
3 fat Garlic Cloves
1 sweet Spanish onion
½ Kg Ripe sweet tomatoes halved and cores removed.
500g Gr. Tomato Passata
1 Small Green pepper roughly chopped
1 Small Red Pepper roughly chopped
¾ Cucumber chopped roughly
3 Tablespoons Rough Breadcrumbs- made with stale bread
3 Tablespoons Sherry Vinegar
4 Tablespoons Good Quality Olive Oil
Salt, Black Pepper and a generous pinch of sugar.

First out with the liquidizer (or you could use a stick blender)
Peel and chop the onion and the garlic and whizz until totally liquid.
(This is the secret- there is nothing attractive about chunks of either in the final soup)
Now get out the food processor and pulse together the tomatoes and the Passata, the peppers and the cucumber, the crumbs, vinegar olive oil and seasonings along with the pureed onion and garlic…
Process these well together.
Now for machine number three, the Mouli Legume- basically the old-fashioned method of pushing stuff through a sieve.
Take out about ¼ of the pureed mixture and set aside to add texture at the end.
Put all the other mixture through the mouli legume until all that is left is the seeds and stem sand skins which you throw out.

An effort? Yes
Worth it? Yes

Now put this in the fridge for several hours with some ice cubes to insure it gets very cold.
Taste it just before you serve it, if properly chilled it may need some extra seasoning.
Serve in bowls with a dribble of olive oil on the top.

You could do without the food processor if you pulsed the mixture in the liquidizer and did not let iut get too smooth.

You could also do without the mouli by pushing through a sieve.