Roasted Tomato Soup

When you open the front door early on a Saturday morning and the raindrops splashes in your face, all good intentions of a hike disappear!

Instead we went back inside and made a cup of coffee and tea. We then checked the pantry to see what was available to make our first pot of soup of this winter.

Not hiking weather, but rather soup weather

Put it on the table:

We had a lot of tomatoes and decided on roasted tomato soup. Last winter, this was one of our favourite soups and we looked forward to eating it again. You can use either big tomatoes or cherry tomatoes (or both) for this delicious soup.

Ingredients

Roast in the oven:

1½ kg tomatoes (cherry and big tomatoes), chop big tomatoes in quarters

1 red onion, chopped in quarters

1 red pepper, roughly chopped

Whole head of garlic

2 sprigs fresh rosemary

2 tablespoons fresh thyme

Olive oil

Salt & pepper (to taste)

Mix the tomatoes, onion, pepper, garlic, rosemary and thyme in a tray and add a generous amount of olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste and place in a preheated oven (190°C/374°F). Roast the vegetables until caramelised – about 50 minutes.

Note: Remember to squeeze the garlic cloves out of the shell before adding them to the liquid

Before and after 50 minutes in the oven

Liquid on the stovetop:

1 white onion, chopped

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon tomato paste

660ml/2,75 cups vegetable stock (you can use chicken stock too if you want)

1 tablespoon dried oregano

Cayenne pepper (to taste)

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

½ tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

½ teaspoon sugar

Handful fresh basil leaves

120ml fresh cream

Salt & pepper (to taste)

Sauté the white onion in butter. Make sure you use a fairly large pot. Add tomato paste, mix it and add all the roasted vegetables from the tray.

Onion and tomato paste

Add the roasted vegetables

Add the stock, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika, balsamic vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Stir and add the fresh basil leaves.

Add the rest of the ingredients

Let it simmer on the stove for 8-10 minutes. Remove the pot from the stove and blend everything together.

Let it simmer and blend

Put the pot back on the stove and add the cream. When it starts to simmer again, turn it off. It’s ready to eat!

Add the cream and stir

Bread is soup’s best friend! I made a cheese toastie in the oven and we enjoyed this with our soup.

Roasted Tomato Soup

Soup with a cheese toastie

After finishing two bowls of soup each, we saw that the sun was casting orange rays into the house. Maybe now was a good time for that hike we abandoned earlier this morning.

An orange sunset after a rainy day

However, it wasn’t long before the clouds started gathering again and we heard the rumble of thunder. It was time to quickly walk back home before we got caught in the rain. Maybe we can enjoy that last bit of soup …

Thunderclouds are back