Summer soups

People always say that shopping at Borough Market is expensive, and it can be – especially if you go crazy in one of the cheese or charcuterie shops. But I find that there are benefits, apart from getting my hands on some of the best produce in London. If you get to know the stallholders, you'll often get the price of your purchase rounded down or something extra chucked into your bag. You also get a heads up on the best produce and inspiration on new ways to cook it.

I love gazpacho with a passion, so when Harry at the Wild Mushroom company told me last Saturday that he had some nice ripe tomatoes in, I knew just what I wanted to do with them. It's true that I did make the stuff in rather vast quantities, but I'm happy to have bowl after bowl of it – and a glassful makes a nice mid-afternoon snack.

Vast quantities of gazpacho

a dozen ripe mid-sized plum tomatoes (or the equivalent if you find other kinds of tomatoes in the right stage of ripeness – around a kilo and a half is my best guess)
1 slightly stale ciabatta or other open-textured loaf, cut into chunks
1 cucumber, de-seeded and cut into chunks
1 Spanish onion, peeled and cut into chunks
3 peppers, cored, de-seeded and cut into chunks
1-2 chillies
2-3 cloves garlic
1.5 litres tomato juice (preferably not from concentrate)
2 tsp ground cumin
2-3 tbsp sherry vinegar
good-quality olive oil
1 tray of ice cubes
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Peel the tomatoes by cutting a cross in their bases and allowing them to lie in a bowl of just-boiled water until the skin starts to split (anywhere between a few seconds and a minute or so, depending on how ripe the tomatoes are). It should then be easy to peel off the skin.

Once they're peeled, remove the hard core near the stem and rinse out the seeds under a running tap.

Tear the bread into chunks and place in a bowl to soak in cold water.

Put the tomatoes, the cucumber, the onion and the peppers into your food processor and blitz. You probably won't get everything into the bowl of your food processor all together, but it doesn't much matter as you can mix everything up in a large bowl.

Squeeze the excess water out of the bread and add that to the contents of the processor, along with the chilli, the garlic and some of the tomato juice.

Tip everything into a large bowl and stir together with the remaining tomato juice, the cumin and vinegar (which should give the soup a zesty lift without making it taste at all vinegary). Sprinkle with olive oil, season and then drop the ice cubes in.

Leave in the fridge for at least an hour or two for the flavours to meld together before serving.

I sometimes garnish mine with fried croutons, but as those are currently out of the question, a quarter of a ripe avocado, sliced, makes a pleasant addition.