Gazpacho Recipe

With not quite enough tomatoes and peppers to start canning up jars of salsa or tomato sauce, but enough that I needed to do something ... a batch of gazpacho seemed the perfect solution!

This makes two full litres.  It is wonderful served with some crusty bread on the side. I had some leftover which served as the sauce base for a lasagna dish later in the week.

Ingredients:
1 english cucumber
2 red peppers
1 hungarian hot wax (or other mildly hot pepper) - optional
3 lbs tomatoes
1 small red onion
2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup good olive oil
salt and pepper

Method:

Everything goes in a blender or food processor to be pureed.  But I split up the ingredients to keep more texture with some.

1) Roughly chop the cucumber (with skin on), peppers and tomatoes.  Pulse in a blender until mostly smooth but retain a bit of texture instead of completely smooth.  Remove to a large bowl.

2) Chop onion and garlic and pulse in blender until fully smooth.  This is why I do it in separate batches as I do want the onion and garlic to be fully smooth.  Add this to the tomato mixture.

3) Pour in most of the white wine vinegar and olive oil but not all in case you want to adjust the taste.  I used a nice aged variety I had on hand) along with a good extra virgin olive oil.  Season with salt.  Give it a taste and adjust if needed.  Or wait until after it has chilled.

Chill for at least two hours.  I ended up adding a bit more vinegar and olive oil after the flavours had better set from the chilling.