Tomato and Strawberry Gazpacho

This soup was inspired by trip I took to Granada with my friends earlier this year. We were sitting at a restaurant in a beautiful square, with a musician playing Spanish guitar, and this the waiter brought out tiny bowls of chilled soup as tapas while we waited for our meal. The flavour was amazing! With the help of my Spanish speaking friend we extracted the approximate recipe - tomatoes and strawberries thickened with bread. It is such a surprising and delicious flavour combination. This is my recreation of the soup.

Strictly speaking I think it should be called salmorejo rather than gazpacho as it is thickened with bread, but I feel like gazpacho is a term more English speakers understand, so I’ve gone with that.

We served this as a starter at our ‘Eat food, mostly plants’ supper club in August and lots of our guests said it was their favourite course, and as it’s really very simple to make I thought I’d share the recipe. This is best made with really ripe tomatoes and strawberries for the maximum delicious flavour! You can skip making the nasturtium oil if you want, or you could make a basil oil or top with roughly torn basil instead.

Serves 4-6 as a starter
The oil will serve a lot more, but you can use it in salad dressings or stirred through pasta

For the soup:
500g ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
200g ripe strawberries, hulled and halved
50g good quality white bread, crusts removed and torn into pieces
2 small cloves of garlic, finely chopped or grated
50ml extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Salt to taste
Petals from 6 nasturtium flowers (optional)

For the oil:
15g nasturtium leaves
75ml olive oil

For the croutons:
6 1/2cm slices from a thin baguette
olive oil
salt and pepper

For the soup put all the ingredients, apart for the vinegar and salt, in a blender and blitz until smooth. Add some of the vinegar and salt and blitz again. Taste and add more seasoning as required.

For a more rustic version of this dish you can now eat the soup as it is, but I prefer to push the mixture through a sieve to remove any seeds and unblended tomato skin - this will give you a silky smooth soup. Chill in the fridge until ready to serve.

To make the nasturtium oil bring a pan of water to the boil and prepare a bowl of iced water. Put the nasturtium leaves in for 10 seconds and then immediately put them in the ice water – this should help the nasturtium leaves retain their colour. Remove the cold leaves from the water and squeeze to remove excess water. Put the leaves in a food processor with the olive oil and a pinch of salt and blitz until pureed. Strain the oil through a piece of muslin until you just have the bright green oil.

To make the croutons slice the baguette into thin slices. Toss in olive oil with a bit of seasoning and bake in the oven at 180°C for 10 minutes or until crisp.

Pour the chilled soup into bowls. Put the crouton in the middle and drizzle over the nasturtium oil. Decorate with a few nasturtium petals.