Salmorejo is a cold soup from Spain. Originating from Andalusia, the southern most part of Spain where temperatures regularly reach 45°C, this soup is refreshing and is a great way of using up old stale bread! It is similar to Gazpacho but is purer in that it only ever includes garlic, tomatoes and stale bread and is much thicker than Gazpacho. Traditional Gazpacho also has red pepper and sometimes even cucumber in it. This recipe is intentionally small as it is for the show but it will scale up if you want it to!
Ingredients
- 4 Ripe Medium Tomatoes – if you haven’t grown them, the best you can get, after all it is a tomato soup!
- ½ Clove Garlic – you really don’t need much
- 120ml (4 fl oz) Extra Virgin Olive Oil – never use Extra Virgin olive oil for cooking, but it is right here!
- 30ml (1 fl oz) Red Wine Vinegar
- 110g (4 oz) Stale White Bread – If you don’t have any, get some fresh bread and leave it out for a while, you soon will have!
- 1 Hard Boiled Egg
- 1 Pinch of Salt – preferably good quality sea salt but don’t buy it specially!
Preparation Method
- Peel the tomatoes The easiest way to do that is to score the bottoms with a cross and drop them into boiling water for 30 seconds. Take them straight out and drop them into iced water. The skins will easily peel off!
- Blend the tomatoes Put the half a clove of garlic into a blender of liquidiser and whiz until it has started to break up. Add the tomatoes and blend until the tomatoes are a liquid consistency.
- Add the bread Leave the bread to soak in a bowl of water whilst you prepare the tomatoes. Then squeeze out as much liquid as you can and add it to the blender. Blend with the tomatoes until the bread has been completely incorporated.
- Add the vinegar and salt Add the vinegar and salt and blend again until you have an even mixture.
- Add the oil If you have one of those whizzy blenders with a hole in the top for adding oil, use that. If not, just add the oil slowly, little by little until you have a smooth emulsified soup.
- Add the wow factor! Slice the hard boiled egg in half, add one half to the blender and blend until fully incorporated. The other half of the egg can be chopped up and used as a garnish when you serve (but not in the show please, we don’t want to poison the judge!)
You should end up with a delicious, flavoursome, thick soup which is about the consistency of mayonnaise. Always serve this soup cold!!
