Monday 22 October 2012

Cream of Tomato Soup: Redux


Okay so get this: on Friday morning, I was rudely phone-alarmed awake for work, and it was completely dark outside. Dark. Outside. Like, night time. The sky outside was the same colour it was when I went to bed. That's never okay. Granted, it was 6 am, and we are rapidly approaching the tail-end of October. This happens every year, right? But for some reason I'm finding it hard to deal with this year.

And it's cold in the mornings! This is an outrage! It's colder now than I remember it being all last winter. This is partly because I have a terrible memory, and considerably less body fat than I did months ago. This, coupled with the nonexistent underwhelming UK summer this year means I've been cold since July.

But never mind all that now because it also means that SOUP SEASON is upon us!

Ahh soup, it's so just so easy. It gets made a lot in our home. Sometimes the tinned form makes an appearance too. Including those little red tins of Heinz cream of tomato. There was a certain point in my childhood where I was having cream of tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch every day.* I'm sure I wasn't the only one. So when I saw a discarded tin in our flat the other day, I wondered if I dared try to recreate a home-made version to have for lunch. A cream of tomato soup redux, if you will.

Well I did dare. And guess what? It turned out well. Really, really well. Oh my god, so well.





Do you want to hear the best part? Of course you do. There's no cream in it. I still have this book left over from my Vegan Days, and despite the woeful lack of food photos, it's one of the best cookbooks out there. I remembered there was a creamy tomato soup recipe in there. Score!

The secret to the creamy consistency is the humble potato (and the hand blender helps too, I guess), but I decided that I was using sweet potatoes. I also used sun dried tomatoes in oil (well-rinsed and dried for a bit in the oven) instead of the plain sun dried whole tomatoes the recipe explicitly called for. The soup turned out well despite these little alterations. I pretty much forced everyone who set foot in the flat this past weekend to try this soup, including a friend I hadn't seen in 8 years ("You're still a loon Sophs"). Anyway, the feedback was all positive so i'll be making this a lot. Let me know if you want the recipe. Or just go buy the Veganomicon. Even if you aren't vegan, or a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, it'll totally be worth your while.

*Okay, not every day. The tomato soup was in a rotation with split pea and clam chowder.

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