Tomato and Rosemary soup

Thursday 2.37pm

It is bitterly cold and dark - the middle of Winter. Christmas and New Year have been celebrated and now it is that dead period of the year, January/February, when there is nothing happening and nothing to look forward to. Or at least what there is to look forward to seems a long, long way off. You need something to cheer you up, something interesting to eat but your body does not yet have that yearning for salads that suggests Spring is close by. But what?

Well how about an intensely flavoured tomato soup made with ingredients from the store cupboard, or the modern equivalent - the supermarket, along with some sort of evergreen herb. I like Rosemary but you have to be carefull because it is quite strong and can easily overpower everything else.

- Peel and chop two red onions and a couple of cloves of garlic and set to cook very slowly in some olive oil, enough to cover the bottom of the saucepan. Leave for a good fifteen/twenty minutes.
- Add in a tin of plum tomatoes, a couple of tablespoonfuls of tomato puree, a tablespoonful of white or red wine vinegar and three quarters of a pint of half strength vegetable stock from a cube or powder.
- Leave to bubble away gently for ages - twenty minutes or more.
- Blend it smooth. You don't have to do this it is just my preference and the taste is slightly different blended to unblended.
- Reheat in the washed out saucepan adding some black pepper and salt if necessary.
-While it reheats drop in a sprig of rosemary, removing it as soon as you can just taste a hint of Rosemary in the background.

I served mine with some thin flat bread spread with butter, garlic, salt and more Rosemary leaves before baking. A brief memory of Summer in the middle of Winter like a dream that all to quickly fades.

Of course if you are in a hurry you could just open a tin of cream of tomato soup and drop in the rosemary sprig whilst warming it through, but where is the fun in that?