Simple, delicious tomato soup

Ah, the magic of summer, the time when I barely step foot in a supermarket. I have apricots from my tree, zucchini, tomatoes, capsicum, eggplant, okra and herbs from the garden, and so much more from family and friends.

I haven’t blogged too many recipes so far this summer. That's because when it’s all so fresh I just keep it oh so simple with salads and lightly grilled or sautéed vegies.

Tomatoes are exceptionally easy to grow if you have a decent patch of soil, although I’ve never seen a potted tomato produce more than a few good tomatoes despite all the love in the world. Plant the seeds into trays of seed raising mix in late winter. In Canberra and other frosty winter climates you’ll need a greenhouse or a sunny indoor spot beside a window. I use a cheap plastic tub to grow my tomato babies – it acts as a greenhouse outside during the day and is carried inside for the night. Keep the seedlings moist but not wet, to reduce chance of disease. 

When the chance of a frost has passed (around early November in Canberra) and the seedlings are about 10 cm tall, transplant them to the sunniest place in the garden, in soil that has been enriched with compost and manure. Plant them so that half the stem is buried – it will grow extra roots and help the seedling to grow healthy and strong. Also plant a tall wooden stake at the same time, so you can tie the plant’s branches to the stake for support later on. By putting the stake in at the start, you avoid disturbing the plant’s roots. Water your plants regularly, adding soluble potash or a teaspoon of Epsom salts to the watering can every fortnight to help the plant to flower and fruit.

Your first tomatoes will ripen around Christmas, and continue through until early March. When the last tomatoes refuse to turn red and the plant’s leaves are withering and yellow, it’s time to pull up the plant and throw it out. Don’t compost it to avoid spreading disease to next year’s crop.

Right now is when my crop is reaching its peak. The plants have already started to wither and die, but not before giving me one last mega pick of around 50 kilos of tomatoes in the last two weeks. 

Big reds and black russians - two delicious tomatoes

Now is the time for preserving your tomatoes for the rest of the year, in soups, sauces and pastes. Last year I shared my recipe for roasted tomato pasta sauce. This tomato soup is even simpler with only three main ingredients – tomatoes, garlic and basil. If you don’t have basil, use oregano or thyme instead. I’ve also added a couple of silverbeet leaves but you could leave them out or use another leafy green or other summer vegies instead. This soup also doubles as a zingy, fresh pasta sauce, to be tossed through pasta or zoodles or used in your favourite lasagne, cannelloni or stew. Either way, it’s super quick and super easy.

Gorgeous homegrown garlic, basil, silverbeet and tomatoes

 

Tomato, basil and garlic soup

1.5 kilos of tomatoes

A good sprig of basil

3 garlic cloves

2 silverbeet leaves (optional)

1½ cups vegetable stock or water

Salt and pepper

Roughly chop your tomatoes and put them in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Smush the garlic cloves using the flat side of a knife, remove the skin, and add the cloves to the saucepan along with the basil and the silverbeet (if using). Put the lid on and let it all simmer away for 25-30 minutes.

Using a stick blender, blend the tomato mix until you’ve got a consistency that you like the look of, either chunky or smooth. Season to taste. At this point you can serve as a pasta sauce, or bottle as a pasta sauce or tomato soup “concentrate”. To make it a soup, simply add the water or stock, stir through and serve hot or cold.

You can’t get any easier than that. What's your favourite way to eat tomatoes? Inspire me :)

Tomato soup garnished with fresh basil and tomato leather

Delicious dealings with the great tomato glut

February and March are what many gardeners know as the time of the tomato glut. You’ve gone from squirting juice and seeds down your front as you munch on tomatoes while standing in the garden, to trying every tomato recipe under the sun, to sighing at that last five kilo box of tomatoes on your floor that’s attracting an unholy swarm of vinegar flies.

For me, this means hosting my own miniature La Tomatina festival in my kitchen as I squish, crush, blend and spatter tomato into various forms that can be enjoyed throughout the year.

There are various ways to preserve your harvest, including:
 

Freezing: simply enclose several tomatoes in a zip lock bag and pop in the freezer. Once you defrost them, the skins will simply peel off and the tomato will be perfect for cooking.
 

Passata: there are a thousand recipes out there but my way is possibly the laziest easiest. I blanch, peel and de-seed the tomatoes by hand, then cram them into jars, screw the lids on tightly and boil them for a while in a large saucepan of water to cook and preserve them. That last part is important – the first time I made passata I left the tomatoes raw. Three days later, they had forced off the lid and a pongy liquid was found foaming its way across my pantry.
 

Pasta sauce: I love making my own pasta sauce – it’s organic, tastes so much better and is so much healthier than commercial varieties, and I can up the garlic quotient as much as I like. Some commercial pasta sauces have up to nine teaspoons of sugar per jar – my recipe comes in at under a teaspoon per jar. Roma and San Marzano are the traditional choices of tomatoes but anything home-grown will be delicious. If you can’t grow your own, loiter around your local markets near closing time and you’ll probably be able to pick up a few kilos at bargain basement prices.

Diana’s spectacular roasted tomato sauce

Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius (fan-forced).

Halve the tomatoes and lay them skin side down on baking trays.*

Drizzle extra-virgin olive oil then lightly sprinkle a pinch of sugar over the top of the tomatoes to counter the tomatoes’ acidity and boost their flavour. I use coconut palm sugar as it has an amazing caramelly flavour, but brown or white sugar will do. Scatter dried herbs over the top – I use my own oregano and thyme – then toss several unpeeled cloves of garlic into each tray.

Roast for around 45 minutes then let cool. Set up a large saucepan, and a sieve over a bowl.

Peel the skins off the tomatoes – they should just slip off – and toss the skin in the sieve and the tomato in the saucepan. If you don’t want the seeds in the sauce, just empty them into the sieve as well. Squeeze the lovely, mellow caramel insides of the garlic cloves into the saucepan and discard the peels.

Pour any excess liquid into the bowl, and squeeze out the tomato skins in there as well to get the last of the juices out before you compost them. What you now have in the bowl is a gorgeous, rich, clear(ish) tomato stock; the perfect base for soup, risotto, quinoa, or just about anything else you use stock in.

Mash the tomatoes - I like my sauce chunky so I usually use a potato masher, but a stick blender gives a great smooth result. Bring the sauce to the boil.

Ladle the sauce into clean glass jars, right up to the brim, and tightly screw the lids on. At some stage during the next couple of hours you may hear a satisfying pop as the vacuum kicks in and the lid depresses, but don’t worry if you don’t.

* If you have a glut of any other summer vegies, add them to the sauce too. Just roast and blend them along with the tomatoes. Last year I made a fantastic sauce that also included eggplants, capsicum and zucchini. This year my eggplants barely qualified as a crop and I’m yet to taste my first capsicum, so it's strictly tomatoes in the sauce.

This sauce will last for at least a year – I’m still eating last summer’s jars – if not more. Store it in the pantry and enjoy with spaghetti, in lasagne or whenever the excuse arises.

Two batches of sauce - one with and one without seeds - and a bottle of the magical tomato stock.

My 70-year-old tomato and other treasures

Summertime for a gardener is synonymous is amazing Mediterranean crops – basil, eggplants, capsicums, and above all, tomatoes. Once you've tasted home-grown tomatoes, you’ll never want to buy a commercial tomato again – I know I haven’t bought a single one in three years.

From left to right - A Roma, from a plant that produced only grape-sized, flavour packed tomatoes; self-sown cherry tomatoes; the stunning, early-harvest Violet Jasper; one of my favourites for flavour and versatility, the Jaune Flammee; normal-sized Roma’s; Mortgage Lifter, and the amazing 1944 Bullheart tomato.

I cropped over 100 kgs of tomatoes last year, which was far, far too much. I force-fed kilos of tomatoes to my colleagues, friends, and neighbours, and still have a dozen jars of 2014-vintage passata and pasta sauce in the pantry despite using a jar every week or so throughout the year.

So late last Winter, I promised myself I’d grow eight tomato plants, max. I sowed the following seeds:

• A 2014 self-seeder - Roma or perhaps San Marzano – a great sauce tomato anyway, with tiny unobtrusive seeds.
• Violet Jasper, a stunning dark maroon tomato with green stripes – not the best for flavour but a very early and enthusiastic cropper – from seed saved from a friend’s 2014 crop. 
• Jaune Flammee, a spectacularly zesty flavoured tomato that’s great raw, in soup or sauces – from my own saved seed.
• Opa’s Brandywine – mega, meaty tomatoes, the seed given to me by Sue Parsons, garden columnist for the Canberra Times. My largest Brandywine weighed in at a whopping 445 grams, although the fables tell of a 673gm tomato grown by a Canberran last year.
• Gold Fleck – seed saved from a Big Red tomato plant grown in 2014 that produced amazing gold-flecked tomatoes. Big, fruity tomatoes with metallic-gold shooting stars across the skin.

The gorgeous Violet Jasper.

Forty-six tomatoes seedlings grew, and suddenly colleagues, friends, and neighbours found themselves being strongly encouraged to adopt a plant or three for the summer. I planted ten plants into my community garden plot.

But still more tomatoes came my way, including the imaginatively named Mortgage Lifter from another local gardening guru met through the Canberra Organic Growers Society. Two more tomato plants appeared of their own accord in the plot, producing cherry tomatoes and sweet round tomatoes the size of golf balls.

Suddenly, I had 13 tomato plants – more than last summer! But the milder summer produced a far more reasonable  crop, around 70 kgs. Many kilos were eaten or given away, and many more were bottled as passata or an amazing roasted pasta sauce (recipe in my next post!).
 

But it wasn’t over yet. In mid-summer, I was absolutely privileged to be gifted with seeds from a Bullheart tomato plant that grew from a 70-year-old seed, the single successful germinator from an envelope of seeds found in an box of black and white photos; a true heirloom. I raised 11 seedlings, gifting nine to other gardeners who would appreciate the significance of the plants. I planted the remaining two in my backyard where they’d be less likely to cross-pollinate with other tomato varieties. 

When they finally fruited, the 1944 tomatoes were stunning – around 500 grams each, heart shaped, and almost all flesh with few seeds. They were quite literally a rich, dense, filling meal in themselves. They were the last seedlings to be planted by several weeks, and are now the only plants still producing fruit. I haven’t yet cooked any as I’m too busy enjoying them raw, sometimes with a dollop of home-made pesto.

A mid-summer harvest - who needs the supermarket!

I'd love to hear from you - what are your favourite ways to eat, cook or preserve tomatoes?