Courgette Gazpacho with Plum Vine Tomato Sorbet, by Derek Johnstone, Head Chef at Borthwick Castle
I’d like to share a simple gazpacho recipe with you today – a dish that is ideal for a quick summer’s lunch or served as a starter at dinner on a warm evening.
Gazpacho is a cold soup, a popular dish in Spain which originated in the southern region of Andalusia. The beauty of gazpacho is that it can be made well in advance, allowing you to spend more time at the table with family and friends rather than in the kitchen. Keep your gazpacho nice and chilled in the fridge and serve it once it’s ready – it’s healthy, straightforward, refreshing and absolutely delicious, which is always a winning combination as far as I’m concerned!
As with all dishes, sourcing the freshest ingredients is vital to the success of your gazpacho. Good quality courgettes, cucumbers and basil leaves are key to achieve the beautiful green hue of this dish, and those fresh flavours which just can’t be beaten. Over the years I’ve tasted a variety of different flavoured gazpachos – tomato is particularly popular – but I do think this courgette recipe is up there with the best of them.
Serving gazpacho with savoury sorbet gives the dish a nice little kick, and ripe plum tomatoes really complement the flavours of the courgette. Sorbet is deceptively simple to make; you can use an ice cream maker if you have one, but this recipe sets just as well after a few hours in the freezer. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Serves 4
Ingredients
For the courgette gazpacho:
300g courgette, cut into chunks
100g spinach, washed
1x green pepper, with the seeds removed
2x spring onions, chopped
3x cloves of garlic, crushed
5x leaves of basil
1x stick of celery, chopped
100g cucumber, seeded and chopped
50ml sherry vinegar
80ml olive oil
A pinch of salt
A dash of green tabasco
For the courgette and green olive garnish:
25g diced pitted green olives
50g diced courgettes
A dash of rapeseed oil
Picked thyme leaves
Salt, to season
For the plum vine tomato sorbet:
4x plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
15ml olive oil
30ml red wine vinegar
A pinch of chopped tarragon
A pinch of cayenne pepper
45ml simple syrup (equal amounts of water and caster sugar, boiled and cooled)
Zest of ½ small orange (blanched and cut into short, thin strips)
20g finely diced shallots
Method
For the courgette gazpacho:
1. Bring a pot of water to the boil. Boil the courgette for one minute, then add the spinach.
2. Cook for 30 seconds, then drain and refresh.
3. Mix the rest of the ingredients for the gazpacho together and leave to marinate overnight.
4. The next day, liquidise the mixture in a food processor and strain through a fine sieve. Leave to chill until ready to serve.
For the courgette and green olive garnish:
1. Wash, dice and pan fry the courgettes in the rapeseed oil until soft and lightly coloured.
2. Leave the courgettes to chill, then season with salt and add the picked thyme leaves.
3. Mix the courgettes with the diced green olives and set aside until ready to serve.
For the plum vine tomato sorbet:
1. Make simple syrup by mixing equal parts boiling water and caster sugar. Leave to cool and set aside until required.
2. Bring the tomatoes to a boil in a saucepan. Reduce the heat and cook, stirring often for around 45 minutes, or until the tomatoes are reduced by half. There should still be some liquid remaining in the pan.
3. Heat the oil, add the shallots, and cook for 7-8 minutes until tender.
4. Add the shallots to the tomatoes, then add the orange zest.
5. Leave to chill, then liquidise in a food processor, along with the rest of the ingredients.
6. Churn in an ice cream machine to create the sorbet. Alternatively, leave in the freezer overnight to create the sorbet.
To serve:
Pour the chilled soup into bowls. Serve with a scoop of tomato sorbet in the centre of each dish, on top of a spoonful of diced courgettes and olives.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here