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Makes a big bowl or about 8 mugs

The first time I tasted gazpacho was at Laurie Castelli’s house. He was one of the first to discover my little deli in Brixton, and so then we were new friends. He now lives in Colombia with his beautiful son and wife, but at the time he lived on crack alley, Rushcroft Road. He lured me over to his stylishly minimal flat to try his brother Gian Castelli’s impeccable cold tomato soup. I left with the offer of a ride on his Moto Guzzi, a cinema date at the ICA, and a delicious taste for this perfect Spanish pick-me-up. As it’s a soup, it’s an unusual choice for breakfast, but trust me, this will wake you up, and cleanse you too. Because the vegetables are all raw, it feels incredibly medicinal.

The next time I came across gazpacho was in Barcelona. My friend Lovely Linda, who was heavily pregnant with Leo at the time, downed a carton of this each morning. And when I tried it too, it made perfect sense. But feel free to drink it at any time of day: in little glasses as a summer starter; in thimbles accompanying a light supper; or as a mid-afternoon reviver. And the trick with Gian’s gazpacho is the use of ground cumin, giving it a Moorish edge. Beware, though, I’ve bust a few blenders masticating this soup. It’s pretty hard to pulverise.

1kg ripe red tomatoes

1 red pepper

1 medium cucumber

1 medium onion

2 garlic cloves

120ml extra virgin olive oil (for posterity’s sake, Spanish, if you can find it), plus a little more for drizzling over at the end

2¹/₂ tablespoons sherry vinegar

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons caster sugar

1 teaspoon Maldon sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

Find a really big mixing bowl to decant each of the ingredients into once they have been prepared: roughly chop the tomatoes into eighths; deseed the pepper and slice into strips; peel and roughly chop the cucumber, complete with seeds; peel and dice the onion and peel and chop the garlic cloves. Pour the extra virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar and cumin into the bowl and mix everything up with your hands. If you have a strong hand-held blender, give it a really good purée, but it’s better still if you have a Magimix, which you can decant the lot into and pulse away on.

When it is a smooth thick soup, you are ready for the next stage. Find a large sieve, place it over another large mixing bowl and pour the gazpacho into it (though Raf recently picked me up an amazing mouli-légumes in Barcelona, which is the real deal in blending a perfect gazpacho). With a metal spoon or a spatula work the soup through the sieve so that it becomes ultimately smooth. You will need to scrape the bottom of the sieve from time to time, to remove the thicker bits. By the end, you will be left with just the woody parts of the vegetables and seeds in the sieve, which you can then discard. Now give the silky gazpacho a thorough mix with a whisk, and season according to your taste, with a little sugar to bring out the flavour of the tomatoes, and also pepper and salt. Serve with a few ice cubes in each mug and a drizzle of excellent Spanish extra virgin olive oil.