Gazpacho

I was hot and tired. The road seemed to be going on forever. All around was the hot dusty plain stretching for miles in every direction. Madrid was somewhere in the hazy south.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, appeared this small town. I pulled up outside a small restaurant, and went in. Everyone was eating gazpacho. I couldn't think of a better way to cool down. I ordered a beer, and waited for my bowl of soup.

It was splendid; one of the best I've eaten, and here we were in a crummy dust-bowl of a town miles from anywhere.

Years later I was in Algeciras, and it was another hot dusty day.I walked into a large restaurant and ordered gazpacho. It came in a tiny soup bowl, and was thin and vinegary. It was almost undrinkable.

It's strange how classic dishes can reach a glorious perfection far from home. I remember the best speghetti bolognese i have ever tasted. It was served in a small expat's restaurant in the hills about twelve miles south of Addis Abbaba in Ethiopia. There was a small band of Italians still living in the country years after the colony of Abbasynia had reverted to being independant Ethiopia, and they were keeping up the traditions. The car was parked by the side of the gravelpit that passed for a main road, and I walked up a steep hill to the restaurant that looked out across a small wooded valley, and there I ate the most perfectly cooked, delightedfully presented, and rather complicated version of speghetti bolognese.

The best Gazpacho I ever came across was when I visited a small, ramshackle shed somewhere in the Canary Islands. Here lived another expat, dreaming of his past decades ago in Madrid. And he explained to me how to make 'proper' gazpacho.

"Most people miss out the most important step," he told me. "It is not a salad soup. You must start by cooking vegetables. It needs depth of flavour. You must also keep in mind the art of presentation. All the salad ingrediants should be cut very small and presented in separate bowls, so the dish is an extravaganza of delight. It is not just a soup, it is a complete meal."

I watched him make the soup. First he took some peppers, onions and courgettes, which he sliced into chunks. He sliced the courgettes lengthways, and then chopped them into largish bite-sized pieces. These were all dropped into a large pan together with a smattering of salt, and sweated in olive oil.

You should cook the vegetables over a highish heat for two or three minutes, and then turn down the heat and let them simmer with the pan covered, to keep in the flavours. They sweat into a very flavoursome base. When this vegetable base is ready you can either just tip the whole lot into the bottom of a large bowl, or liquidise it and then tip it into the bowl.

To this mixture you should add a litre of tomato juice, a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, a tablespoon of vinegar, and stir everything till blended. You then chuck half a dozen ice cubes on top and put the bowl into the fridge.

The next stage of the proceedings is to get a couple of small onions, a cucumber, a yellow pepper and some tomatoes. The point here is to produce a selection of different colours. These items you dice up very small, and place a mound of white onions in one small bowl, a mound of red tomatoes in another small bowl, and then a bowl of pale green cucumber, and a bowl of yellow peppers. These you cover with a squirt of fresh lemon juice.
The soup will keep for several days (tho the chopped salad items will not).

You should serve the soup as a complete meal. Ideally the soup tureen should be in the middle of the table with the small bowls of salad items ranged around it. You should also serve croutons with the soup. The proper way to do it is to fry your own bread, but for various reasons that is regarded these days as a rather unhealthy option.

The ideal drink with this dish is an ice-cold fino. If you dont like dry wines then you could drink a chilled rose, a vino verde, or sangria.

You will of course make your own sangria. You need a soft red wine. You should throw in a glass of brandy. You then need to cut up a lemon, briefly squeeze and drop into the jug. Cut and squeeze the juice from three or four oranges, and drop in the ravaged segments. You are supposed to add apples, but one rarely finds them in the Algarve.

Next, just sit there facing your meal on the table and think for a moment just how wonderful and beautiful life is. Then scoff the lot.

Estupendo!