Summer Lovers-Tomatoes and Gazpacho

Summer time. It conjures up images of ice cream. Beaches. Sand. Stone fruit. Crickets chirping. And for me…tomatoes!

I have always associated tomatoes with summer. There's something about this sexy fruit that hypnotises every part of me. I can never resist eating them or photographing them for that matter.

Last year I made a

bruschetta

that combined the classic

Italian Caprese

ingredients as a topping. The year before I made an

easy salad

, marvelling in joy at the simplicity and availability of different heirloom tomato varieties.

This summer I want to celebrate with gazpacho. Yep! We're having soup! "Sopa Espanol".

I can tell you now quite honestly, that if you had asked me to eat this a number of years ago I would have laughed in your face!

"Cold soup?"…yeah right!

But things change as do tastebuds. (I know I have written about it a few times before but I seriously was a terrible eater as a child. I put my parents through hell. Yes. I was one of those children that had separate meals cooked for them…now back to our gazpacho!)

And here I am now, preaching the wonders of this glorious elixir.  Gazpacho really does celebrate the best of summer. It's a brilliant combination of crisp cucumber, sweet capsicums and plump, juicy, ripe tomatoes.

Throw in some stale bread, garlic and olive oil and you create a nectar good enough for any god!

As you can imagine there are numerous recipes for gazpacho on the internet.

In the end, I adapted a recipe from Jamie Oliver's "Jamie Does Spain, etc…" cook book.

I loved his recipe immediately but being me, I had to chop and change it slightly. I added some chopped chilli to the mix because I quite like the chili and tomato combo. The only other thing I did was add some feta cheese as a garnish. I couldn't resist a "Greek touch".

This soup needs to be served cold. Anything less and you wouldn't be doing it any justice.

Go ahead...make some!

Just a note: I'm trying something different for the recipe today. I've presented it a little different. You can now download the pic below as a pdf and save it to your favourite device. Let me know what you think. Cheers!