GAZPACHO, original from southern Spain is the perfect starter for those warm summer days, those days on which the weather is very hot and sticky.

Ingrediants.- The main ingredients we are using to prepare this dish are: tomatoes, green or red peppers (the cheaper the better), cucumbers, dried bread, olive oil, salt, vinegar, onion, some cloves of garlic, water and some spices as comin, mint and a tinge of hot peppers. These ingredients and the exact amounts are shown in the picture.

The kiwis? Well, they don’t form part of the ingredients for Gazpacho, simply they were in the refrigerator, I took them out to clean it, and I didn’t know where to put them. My house is not very big, you know.

Hey, hey! Wait a minute! Don’t touch them! The ingredients should be like the ones shown in the "pitcher" not the ones in the picture, they are mine. I bought them and I paid with my own money. They weren’t precisely cheap.

Quantities.- Let’s say that about four pounds of very ripe tomatoes, a medium size cucumber, half-a-pound of peppers, about three ounces of oil, water as needed, dried bread (the leftovers of former meals) as needed (the bread is used mainly to give consistency to the recipe). Salt, vinegar, mint, comin, etc, to taste. I’m completely sure that after 235 tries you’ll find the proper proportions.

The above quantities will make an amount of Gazpacho good for, for how many? How the heck could I know that. It depends of how hungry they are. I won’t be wrong if I say that it’ll be good for between two and 154 people.

What else are we "gonna" need? Well, devices or artifacts as the ones shown in the pictures.

A blender.- This is very important for the dish is a blend of all shown ingredients, unless you wish to spend a couple of years spinning your wrist back and forth.

A hand-operated mixer.- Unless the blender used has a capacity of four gallons, you can blend the ingredients little by little, and then mix them all together with this artifact in a bigger capacity bowl.

An iron and an ironing board.- These two devices are not strictly needed. I put them here just in case that while preparing the dish, some of the contents splash over your shirt, you’ll need to wash it and then to iron it, unless it is of that blessed kind called "wrinkle free".

Preparation.- Peel the tomatoes and take their cores away. Peel the cucumbers (at this moment you’re getting rid of a lot of vitamins, but don’t worry, you can buy them in a flask in any store). Don’t peel the peppers but discard the seeds. Blend of all them with some water, including the oil, bread, spices, etc. Mix all together in a bowl.

Tip.- You’ll very easily peel the tomatoes if you let them scald in water for few minutes.

Tip.- In spite of peeling tomatoes you can use cans of peeled fresh tomatoes.

"Gazpacho" is usually served with a side dish containing pieces of onion, tomato, pepper, cucumber and bread cut in cubes.

A bottle of 1991 Spanish red Rioja wine will also be of help.

Serve very chilly or with some rocks of ice on it.