I love coffee; I drink it every morning to kick-start my day. But coffee has to be hot – steaming and fragrant. Several times in my life, I’ve tried iced coffee. Now that stuff is just weird – it’s not coffee, it’s just unpleasant. I’m sorry, but iced coffee and me, we just don’t get along. I like mine hot. It’s not just coffee either – I have exactly the same views when it comes to iced tea.
Soup? Well, soup should be hot, of course. Cold, iced soup? That’s just as wrong as iced tea and coffee. An abomination. I confess I’ve never actually tried an iced soup – my experience with the other liquids has convinced me it won’t be worth the effort. But, we have a gazpacho recipe here, so it needs making.
The weather forecast was for the hottest day of the year so far – 34˚C here, so perhaps making an iced soup for dinner wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.
I start by cutting some old, slightly stale, bread into cubes to make croutons. I drizzle them with olive oil and pop them in the oven.
Whilst they are cooking, I start preparing the ingredients. It turns out that making gazpacho is all about chopping.
I chop tomatoes (skinned first, of course).
Red pepper.
Green Pepper.
Cucumber (peeled).
Onion.
Mint.
I grate up a little garlic.
And take the croutons out of the oven.
Next, I prepare the garnishes – more vegetables, this time chopped finely.
I take some ice.
And put all the ingredients into a bowl, together with passata, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper, a good dash of Tabasco, a dollop of tomato ketchup and some olive oil.
I then attack it with the blender. A minute or two later, it looks more like soup.
I then push the soup through a coarse sieve.
And finally whisk in some more olive oil.
The gazpacho is served in chilled bowls, sprinkled with the garnishes and croutons, together with an ice cube.
It’s well into the evening now and it’s still 30˚C outside. We take the soup to the table in the garden to eat.
This soup is amazing. It’s delicious. It is full of beautiful flavours. I never thought that what is basically an iced vegetable smoothie could be so tasty. The vinegar gives a slight sharpness and really brings out the flavours of all the vegetables. We eagerly go back for a second bowl.
Sue says:
Wow! This soup is pretty amazing. It really tastes like it’s been cooked and then chilled. But it hasn’t. It’s just a big old smoothie really.
The flavours pop. It’s very tasty and very appealing on a hot day. I liked this much more than I thought I would. We happily ate our way through two bowls sat on the patio in the evening air. It was lovely. Not very filling though, as it is really just vegetable juice and a little bit of added finely chopped vegetables.
It was a fully vegan meal, and I really liked it.
I’d say if you haven’t tried this, then you should.
10/10
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