An intensely tasty soup, perfect for an autumn lunch
I realise that I'm becoming rather obsessed by roasting green tomatoes. In my defence, we did have A LOT of them, and rather than let them rot on the vine, I thought this would be a good way to 'save' them. Well - can I just say that I'm patting myself on the back big time now I've discovered not only how to save the tommies by roasting, but now by finding something to do with them once roasted (because, weirdly, my husband wasn't keen on having them as a side to every supper dish I plan...)
As before, begin by roasting your tray of tomatoes and a few cloves of garlic - tossed around in olive oil, salt and pepper, mixed herbs and controversially, a teaspoon of sugar.
I roasted them for 2 hours at about 175C. As always, the smell that comes from the oven is AMAZING at this point.
At this stage you can cool them and store them in the fridge for a few days. I did and then made the soup the next day; but if you have asbestos fingers crack on now with peeling the papery skin off the garlic cloves.
Add all of these tomatoes and the garlic (I don't have an accurate weight - but as you can see it was enough to cover the large roasting tin without being too layered) to a large saucepan and add 1pint of Bouillon powder stock.
Simmer it for a few minutes and catch any obvious tomato skins that float to the top. Don't get obsessed by it though, as the next step is blitzing the whole thing with a hand blender.
Now - first major warning, of the sort that no one ever really tells you about cooking... once it's blended (and you'll need to be quite thorough with the blending to get all the skins and seeds etc) it will be THICK. At this point, slosh in some milk and some passata STAT or you will end up with hot mud style eruptions coming out of seemingly nowhere. I would suggest just adding more stock in the first place, but the trick to this soup is that it needs tasting and adjusting depending on how ripe etc your tommies were. So slosh in the milk and the passata and stir it all in. I also added a spoonful of cream cheese because there's obviously something wrong with me, but oh boy, is it good. If I'd have had cream in the fridge, it would have gone in too. Finish up with seasoning and possibly even one or two teaspoons of sugar - don't forget these were massively under ripe veg.
Serve up with a toasted cheese scone smeared with more cream cheese and enjoy! The taste of this soup is so hard to describe, but it's like the Tang-fastic version of cream of tomato soup - you're hit with instant flavour and it just keeps coming. There's nothing bland about it (except the colour!) and a little goes quite a long way - this recipe would do at least four servings.
Variations
Making this with roasted red tomatoes would probably make the colour more appetising... and apart from that, condensing it to become a sort of pizza or pasta sauce (the type you used for baked pasta dishes like cannelloni for example).
Credit
Humble brag - all my own invention. Especially the cream cheese bit, I mean no one else would do that, would they? Weirdoes.