Saturday, August 8, 2009

A Roast Tomato soup



I spent today thinking of Tuscany. I am not sure if this is exactly true but I seem to remember reading that in Tuscany they use a lot of bread in cooking. The reason for this is because the powers that be at the time decided to raise some money by taxing salt. Hence to save money the Tuscans made bread without salt. But the downside of this was that the bread went stale more quickly resulting in various dishes that used stale bread imaginatively.

This soup has nothing to do with Tuscany of course, but it was delicious . . . . and I think the best way to use stale bread is to make croutons!

- Put your oven on to it’s hottest setting.
- In an oven proof dish put 5 or six tomatoes, an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and a bunch of Thyme. (Peel and roughly chop each as appropriate.)
- Sprinkle over some salt, ground black pepper and a couple of tablespoonfuls of olive oil. 
- Stir it all about a bit and pop in the oven.
- Leave to cook until the tomatoes are blackened around the edges - twenty minutes or so depending on how hot the oven is.
- Meanwhile roughly chop some stale bread, I had a bit of left over ciabatta, put in a bowl with salt, pepper and a crushed and chopped clove of garlic.
- Pour over another tablespoonful or two of olive oil, stir, and leave to sit.
- Ten minutes before the tomatoes are ready put the croutons onto a baking tray and place in the oven.
- The will be fine, but watch the croutons because they will quickly burn. Take them out just as they get golden brown and just charred at the edges.
- Take the tomatoes from the oven, allow to cool fro a few minutes then pour into a sieve over a bowl.
- Use a wooden spoon to rub the tomato mixture through the sieve, removing the skins, seeds and stalks etc in the process.
- Put the tomato sauce into a saucepan with an equal amount of vegetable stock and a small potato peeled and chopped smallish.
- Bring back to a simmer and cook until the potato is soft.
- Finally crush the potato up a bit with a masher, check and add more salt or pepper if required and the soup is made.

Serve with the croutons, a squeeze of lemon juice and some bright green chopped parsley.


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8 comments:

sangeeta said...

good one....thyme n tomato roasted together....a burst of flavor,will be good even without the lemon juice...

Katerina said...

This looks delicious, I love the focus on simple ingredients.

Sweet Mary said...

Okay - I am definitely going to make this one - sounds delicious and with a hint of warmer days to come - thanks Peter

Tim said...

This looks terrific, so bright and fresh sounding. With that intro I thought you were going to make a bread & tomato soup where bread is actually incorporated into the soup to give it body. I think that's Tuscan actually!

Peter said...

@Tim
I did start out with the thought of putting the bread in the soup . . . but the lure of croutons proved to much for me ;-)

peter

Anonymous said...

I love the title of your blog! I oould eat soup every single day - even if its 100 degrees outside!

In fact today I am going to make Rick Bayless' Soapa Azteca - almost like a tortilla soup - for my lunches this week.

Thanks for this recipe!!

Amy said...

Ooh yum. This sounds great! And croutons are wonderful on everything.

Jeanne said...

Made this today, and it was wonderful. I'm going to take the overabundance of tomatoes coming out of my garden these days, make the tomato sauce from the first part (roasting tomatoes & spices), and freezing the result in individual ice cube trays. Then I can have fresh roasted tomato soup all winter long!

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