Soup – What’s the key to making thick soups

It sounds like Hungarian Chicken Paprikash. Basically is just Hungarian chicken and dumplings. Really tasty though.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&pwst=1&&sa=X&ei=PFVxTITfIcH58AaHlemMBg&ved=0CBYQvwUoAQ&q=hungarian+chicken+paprikash&spell=1

Gazpacho is possibly Spain's most famous chilled soup. The main difference aside form the temperature is that it's raw, meaning that the soup is not actually cooked it's just blended and chopped vegetables and occasionally bread. There is nothing inherently wrong with heating up gazpacho but it would lose its fresh texture and flavour which is why it's chilled and according to Wikipedia was popular with labourers who used it to:

"cool off during the summer and to use available ingredients such as fresh vegetables and stale bread"

The main reason you couldn't just chill a normal soup and call it gazpacho is because gazpacho is made up of by no means just tomato. It contains tomatoes, a bit of garlic, cucumber, occasionally bread, some vinegar for tang and a drizzle of olive oil at the end.

If you wanted to make it your own (after all you're the chef!) you could add some Tabasco, bell peppers, spring onions or croutons at the end, basically anything you might find in a salsa dip. Use your common sense for what not to add but even in Spain they have variations that are not at all like what I would think of as gazpacho: in La Mancha they use it like a stew and add game (usually rabbit) and even wild mushrooms!

Hope this helps and gives you some inspiration, if you want a recipe a quick search on Google gives a multitude of results.