I love gazpacho and made it for the first time for a party recently.  It was a huge hit.  I wanted to share it with you here.  It was so fresh and just the right notes of vinegar and tabasco to balance the freshness of the ingredients.  There’s a lot of chopping but it’s worth it.  If you need to increase the recipe size, prepare it in batches.  The amount below is enough for one very full blender.

Ingredients

• 6 to 7 ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1 small purple onion, finely chopped
• 1 cucumber peeled, seeded and chopped
• 1 sweet red bell pepper, seeded and chopped (could be green any sweet pepper)
• 2 stalks of celery chopped
• 1 – 2 Tbsp of parsley (I liked 2 Tbsp)
• 2 Tbsp chopped chives
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1 1/2 lemons)
• 2 teaspoons of sugar (I used organic raw)
• 6 or more drops of Tobasco sauce (start with 6, taste then add more if desired)
• 4 cups of tomato juice
• Salt & pepper to taste

Chop up everything and dump it in the blender.   Put it on a setting you can easily control and keep an eye on it.  It took less than 60 seconds on my blender to get everything blended to the consistency I wanted.  Taste.  Add tobasco and salt and pepper and do a quick blend.  Taste again.  It’s was scrumptious fresh, but even better the second day once the juices all had a chance to blend together.

This recipe is for 8 servings and I was eating it for days afterwards.  It was great.  The original recipe calls for Worcestershire sauce but I eliminated it due to a food allergy in my household.  I also went lighter with the onion than the recipe calls for because it has a lot of bite.  You might want to do 1/2 an onion to start and then add a bit more if desired.

Enjoy!

Lisa

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