A Canadian Cook with Spanish Flavor: Gazpacho or Salmorejo?

Which one do you prefer? There seems to be a 50-50 distribution to this question. For those not really familiar with spanish cooking: Gazpacho is a cold tomato soup made of green peppers, cucumbers and, obviously, tomatoes; salmorejo is made of tomatoes and bread. Ok, those are the major ingredients, each have oil, garlic, salt...

My personal preference: salmorejo. I just love it. I don't know if it's because it is usually served with hard boiled egg and jamon but, to me, it wins over the gazpacho :) David, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to have a preference.

I know that summer is over and this is a typical dish to serve when the weather is hot, but my coworker Irene celebrated her birthday last month and made us salmorejo. She got the recipe from her mother-in-law that comes from Cordoba, the birthplace of this wonderful dish. Let's just say that her recipe ROCKS! She was kind enough to give me the recipe and I can tell you that it came up "almost" (I'll never take more credit than the person that gave me the recipe) as good as hers. :)

So without further ado, a taste of a southern spanish dish to you all.

Salmorejo

Ingredients:

1 kg red tomatoes
1/2 or 1 bread with lots of "white"
1 garlic clove
1/2 cup olive oil
salt
1 egg
3 spanish ham slices

In a mixer, place the tomatoes cut into small pieces.

Add the garlic clove, the bread cut up into small pieces and the olive oil.

Blend well. Since my slicer blender did not give it the perfect smooth texture, I switched to the hand blender and worked it.

You can see the smooth texture in the above picture. Keep on blending until you reach it.

You can add more olive oil depending on how liquid you want it.

Add the salt.

Cut into small pieces the hard boiled egg and the spanish ham.

Serve at the table and let your guests dress their soup. I had made two eggs thinking one wouldn't be enough... I was wrong! It is quite obvious from the picture below :)