Gazpacho

Gazpacho soup, also known as gazpacho, is a cold, tomato-based Spanish soup that is popular in warmer areas and during the summer. It is usually spicy, but a milder variant has also become popular.

In both fiction and real life, there have occurred embarrassing situations in which a show-off is chastened for insisting that his or her cold soup be heated up.

Sample recipe

Ingredients

• 1 lb /450 g tomatoes
• 1/2 lb / 225 g green peppers
• 1/2 cucumber
• clove of garlic
• a few coriander leaves (cilantro)
• 1/4 chilli pepper, seeds removed (optional, leave out if you want a milder soup)
• 2 oz / 50 g white bread, 2–3 days old (also optional, leave out for a thinner soup)
• 1/2 mild Spanish onion

• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/3 pt iced water
• Sea salt and black pepper
• Ice cubes

To Garnish:

• 2 tomatoes, skinned
• 1/2 green pepper
• 1/4 peeled cucumber
• 2 slices stale white bread, crusts removed

Method

Skin the tomatoes and cut into quarters. Remove seeds and stalks from peppers. Peel the cucumber and cut into chunks. Tear up the bread and soak it in water for 30 minutes and then squeeze it dry. Cut up the onion.

Blend all the ingredients until roughly chopped, not too fine, because the soup should have texture and discernible vegetable bits. Pour into large bowl with some ice, add salt and pepper. Then prepare the garnishes. Dice the bread and fry it in a little olive oil until brown. Chop the other vegetables finely. Serve in separate little bowls on the table, so that guests can sprinkle on their own toppings.

Serve chilled.

Gazpacho soup in fiction

• In the science fiction series Red Dwarf, one character (Arnold Rimmer) dies in a radiation leak. His last words are 'gazpacho soup'. Later, when resurrected as a hologram, he is persuaded to explain why these were his last words. He recounts the sad story of his humiliation as a young officer cadet, in which he embarrassed himself in front of senior officers by complaining to the waiter that the gazpacho soup was cold. Rimmer ends up eating a 'bowl of piping hot gazpacho soup'.
• In Pedro Almodovar's 1987 film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios), different characters help themselves to the soup made by Pepa (Carmen Maura) and instantly fall into a deep and long sleep.

External links

• Gazpacho recipe
• Spanish Recipes

Gazpacho in pop culture

Gazpacho is a song by progressive rock band Marillion from the Afraid of Sunlight (Album) (1995)