Tomato Soup Recipe

I really think that you, my Sun Temple people need to have a simple tomato soup recipe up your sleeves, to pull out when simplicity is the order of the day and your temple demands clean, fresh, uncomplicated nourishment. Sort of a simple prayer rather than a litany. I made this tomato soup in London but I could just as easily have cooked it in St. Lucia. Such is the transferability of simplicity.

When I made my Fresh tomato sauce I showed you how to skin tomatoes by putting them in the freezer first. The method I used here was the “yang” to that “yin” in that I poured over boiling water. The result is the same. After 1 minute in the boiling water, the skins literally peel off. Once the tomatoes are all naked, chop them up roughly.

The Tomato Soup Recipe Serves: 4

The Soup

3 tbsp olive oil

1 kg plum tomatoes (approx 8 or 10)

2 Romano peppers (or any sweet red pepper)

1 red onion

2 garlic cloves

3 carrots

1 red chilli pepper

2 celery sticks

1 medium sweet potato

200ml (1 c) water

salt to taste

The Basil Puree

25g basil (a large bunch)

1/2 tsp rock salt

2 tbsp olive oil

When you are dealing with the tomatoes, heat up the olive oil and gradually add the ingredients from the soup list giving it a stir from time to time to stop any sticking and to cover everything in the olive oil. You don’t have to be precious about this as it all gets blended in the end. Add the water once all the lovely oranges and reds are “limin’ happily.

Cook with a lid on for 20 minutes or so until all the vegetables are soft. Blend until smooth. I used a wand blender as this saves on washing up, but feel free to creatively achieve smoothness.

The thing that sets this tomato soup recipe apart from the masses is this basil puree. All you have to do is pound the leaves and the rock salt together, preferably in a mortar and pestle as I have done, or in whichever pulverising/blending method you can come up with. Its a little like magic in that one minute there’s the beautiful leaves and next, an aromatic puree. I had to add my leaves a bit at a time as 25g is a rather large bunch.

Once pureed, add the olive oil to make it spreadable and artfully drizzle it on top of your delicious awaiting soup. This basil puree adds the most sublime complexity to each mouthful that it sneaks into.