Where does Gazpacho come from?
Gazpacho recipe comes from Andalucía, a region located in the south of Spain and is basically a cold soap of tomato, cucumber, onion, garlic, olive oil and vinegar. People use to eat it in summer, to refresh themselves with natural products from the vegetable garden.
This is such a daily recipe for Andalusian people because it is easy, tasty and fresh but, the problem with this is that in every house is prepared in a different way and, for each one, the best Gazpacho is the one they do.
So, we are going to prepare the basic one but, some people add onion to this recipe and also diced onion to accompany the soup and for other people that is such a sacrilege.
In Andalusia, you can find other varieties of this dish and also delicious, like ‘Salmorejo’ or ‘Mazamorra’.
I hope any Andalusian see my recipe because, for sure, they add something else to their recipe that will make it the most delicious of the world, and I don’t want many critics.
What is the origin of Gazpacho?
The origin of Gazpacho is uncertain but, traditionally it has been considered to come from the times of Al-Andalus, when the Muslims where the governors of Spain.
The first Gazpacho has been evolving over the years to reach the Gazpacho we have nowadays, first Gazpacho didn’t even had tomatoes. This fact is due to the origin of tomatoes, they came from America, and Columbus didn’t get to America until 1492 so, as we are talking about the year 800 approximately, they didn’t even know the existence of tomatoes at that time!
The first tomatoes arrived to Spain in the 17th century but it wasn’t until the 19th century when people started adding tomatoes to the Gazpacho.
Now is time for the cucumber, other of the main ingredients of Gazpacho that wasn’t use in the beginning, why? Easy, it is though cucumber arrived to Spain from India. From India, it got to Greece and from Greece to Rome and romans started to plant it in Hispania, where they could produce it the whole year due to the green houses. And for Spain it arrived to America, where it is used also to prepare lots of recipes from the central and south regions of America.
The last of the main ingredients of Gazpacho, green pepper, isn’t from Spain neither. Actually, it is thought to come from Mexico so, as happened with tomato, this ingredient wasn’t added to Gazpacho until 17th century.
So, finally we have a traditional Spanish recipe that needs to greet America and India the awesome taste it has today, a mixture of flavours and origins that makes Gazpacho unique and irresistible.
Ingredients:
- 1,2 kg of tomatoes.
- 1 green pepper.
- 1 garlic glove.
- 1 medium size cucumber.
- 100 g of hard bread.
- Virgin Olive Oil.
- Red wine vinegar.
- Cold water.
- Salt
Time of preparation: 10 minutes.
How to cook Gazpacho:
First step: Ingredients preparation.
Firstly, we have to clean and chop all the ingredients and we put them inside a bowl, we add 250 mL of the Virgin Extra Olive Oil and 250 mL or cold water and 50 mL of vinegar.
Now we grind everything and strain it. Voilà!! Your Gazpacho is ready!!
To enjoy this healthy, fast and tasty dish, is advisable to eat it cold, so it will need about 2 hours of fridge before eating. Never add ices to make it get cold or you will have a watery Gazpacho, and that completely spoils the taste.
Another advisable thing is to cover it with transparent film when you put it inside the fridge, to avoid oxidation and the loose of vitamins.
To accompany the Gazpacho, you can fry some small pieces of bread and cut the same ingredients of Gazpacho in little dices and put them on the served dish, as you can see in the main picture.
