Last week was an extremely hot one in the UK and I don’t know about you, but one thing that I couldn’t face was to turn on my oven to cook anything!!🥵 I thought to myself: “What could I possibly eat that is not yet another salad variation? 🤔”

Then I remembered my holidays in Spain couple of years ago where I had that amazing refreshing cold tomato soup called Salmorejo, similar to a gazpacho but with more sustenance given by the bread blended in and some delicious toppings of hard boiled eggs and sliced cured ham 🤤 Absolutely delish although, I could have done without the garlic for my IBS!

So I decided to make my own super quick version between that and a gazpacho that I’ve called… Gazpalero 🥣 !(I profusely apologize to the purist in advance for this fusion experiment!). I adapted it to make it IBS friendly but it was ready in pretty much the same amount of time than the episode of Friends that was playing on the background (“The One With The Flashback”, epic episode!) so why don’t you give it a try and let me know what you think in the comments!

Gazpalejo

(or my fusion version of Gazpacho and Salmorejo made IBS friendly)

Servings: 2-3 (depending level of hunger)

Time required: 1 episode of Friends (or ~20minutes)

Level of difficulty: Dead easy

Equipment required: Blender (hand held one preferably), Saucepan

Other: Bonus recipe of melon wrapped in prosciutto for starter!

Ingredients

• 400g x 2 Cans of San Marzano tomatoes (or you can use any chopped can tomatoes, the San Marzona are just the best!)
• 2 slices of Sourdough brown bread ( or ~50g of white bread if you don’t have any sensitivity to gluten)
• 1 red pepper
• 1 tbsp of vinegar (I used balsamic as I like its sweet taste but you can use sherry if you have some in the cupboard!)
• 4 large eggs
• 4 slices of prosciutto or Serrano ham if you can find it
• Extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 tsp Asafoetida (replacement for garlic)
• Salt/black Pepper

Instructions

1. Place the eggs in a saucepan and cover them with water then wait for it to come to a boil
2. Once the water starts to bubble away, leave them to cook for 8 minutes
3. In the meantime, remove the seeds from the red pepper and grossly chop them in big chunks
4. Place them in a blender and pour in the cans of tomatoes, the slices of bread ripped into pieces, the vinegar, the oil, salt, the Asafoetida and few grinds of black pepper
5. Blitz everything until you get a smooth soup consistency, taste it and adjust seasoning if necessary then set aside
6. Take the boiled eggs off the heat and run them through cold water before peeling them
7. Chop the eggs in little chunks and cut the slices of ham in small strip of 1 cm
8. Ladle the soup in serving bowls with bits of eggs and pieces of ham
9. Finish it up by drizzling with a bit of olive oil and put a few twists of ground pepper on the top.

Voila! Ready to eat so bon appetit! 🙂

Notes: If you find it too thick to your taste, add few ice cubes in the soup, it will dilute it down whilst keeping it cool!

And as promised, recipe for my Melon and prosciutto starter below:

Ingredients

• Melon
• Prosciutto ham
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Basil leaves
• Reduced balsamic vinegar
• Black Pepper

Instructions

1. Cut the melon in half and remove the seeds with a spoon
2. Peel the skin off and cut 2cm thick slices of melon
3. Wrap each melon slice with a slice of ham around the middle
4. Dispose them on a plate with the basil leaves on top then drizzle some olive oil and some balsamic reduction and a bit of ground pepper

That’s all folks!

Keep cool and carry on eating! ☀