“…on the table, in the belt of summer, the tomato, luminary of earth, repeated and fertile star, shows us its convolutions, its canals, the illustrious plenitude and the abundance…” – Pablo Neruda.

The fellow is right.

Orbs of joy.

Wow, I had to post again so soon because the cherry tomatoes growing in the veggie patch were too good to pass up. The hot summer sun intensifies the rich flavour of these little orbs of joy. They have a richness of flavour not found in supermarket varieties. They positively explode in your mouth when you bite into them, and as we had a glut of them, I decided to make soup. Simple and unadulterated fresh tomato soup.

Take one large finely diced onion and sweat it off in a big pan with some robust extra virgin olive oil for a good hour. Yes, you read correctly, one hour. This intensifies the sweetness of the onion and develops those lovely caramel flavours and colour that will give a great  base note to the soup. Because you are sweating them on such a low heat you are free to potter in the kitchen doing other things and stir the pot once in a while. Trust me, the aroma will have you back often enough.

Very slowly heated onion.

When the onions are soft and nicely golden you can add the uncut tomatoes (if they are big cut them up) and give them a gentle warming with the onion to soften them and free up some juices. It is better to skin them first but these where too small and fiddly so when the soup was cooked I passed the liquid through a fine sieve. You could use skinned tinned tomatoes if you don’t have fresh ones by the way.

Glistening succulence.

At this point a little water facilitates the juices flowing out of the tomatoes. Simmer gently for about 45 minutes. If you’ve already removed the skins you can stick blend or puree the soup at this point and add some salt. That is all that it needs. A simple and tasty showcase for fresh, sunny summer tomatoes. Yummo…

Ready to go.

You could, if you were so inclined, add some shaved parmesan and a wee bit of black pepper, but honestly, it was delightful just as it was.

Needless to say, fresh crusty bread served with lashings of good butter goes down a treat!

Kind regards,

J