Since I bought a food processor my cooking has been revolutionized. It’s nothing but a simple blender with a few functionality. It is also, and above all, the author of different recipes, new smoothies and drinks in my kitchen. The following tomato soup has baptized this new tool and warmed up one of the first rigid winter day in London.
Although basic in principle, making a good tomato soup is not an easy thing. A lesson learnt in time, after a few trials of too sour and/or too liquid soups. The perfection is achieved through a firm consistency and a smooth flavour. In fact any tomato tastes good when fresh; when cooked an processed to a sauce, it can bring lots of acidity to your palate (an stomach!).
In short, unless you’ve been so lucky to find the perfect sweet tomatoes, this soup needs a correction. Before that, make sure you have selected the right ingredients. First of all what I like to call “the unconventional tomatoes”. Those one that are pretty soft and very ripe. Those one you wouldn’t consider because too mature and you’d never buy for any other recipe.
My favourite choice? Definitely San Marzano tomatoes. Long and moist, they would be the right choice indeed. Unfortunately this kind of tomato is not often available, so I usually fall back on some well ripe tomatoes on the vine. I’ve got a good result with them: a hearty soup I enjoyed together with some tasty warm polenta.
Before leaving you to the recipe I’m going to tell you my secret for the “correction ingredient”, the one preventing the soup from being too acidic. The juice contained in any tomato has a pH of 4.3, a value rather low (low pH, high acidity).
It is good to learn how to bring the equilibrium in our recipes, through the consumption of alkaline foods, for example vegetables such as carrots in this case, to contrast the action of those more acid.
All types of dairy products produces acids in our stomach. Cream, butter and milk are among them. Fresh low-fat yogurt is an exception, providing animal proteins which nourish without producing acids. Here’s then unveiled my secret ingredient: the yogurt. Many would choice a sour cream or butter; to make my soup gentle to my stomach I choose a dense organic yogurt, instead.
Ingredients
- 5 ripe tomatoes
- 1 grated carrots
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 yellow pepper (optional)
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- salt and chilli
- 3 tbsp natural yogurt
- 1 cup tomato sauce (italian passata)
- Few leaves of basil
Instructions
- Bring the tomatoes to the boil. Cook until the skin starts peeling off.
- Meantime put the grated carrots, garlic (finely chopped) and chilli in a pan with oil. Stir fry for 3-4 minutes.
- Put the tomatoes in the blender together with the passata and the sauteed carrots/garlic/chilli and blend on high for about 60 seconds or until blended to a smooth consistency.
- Heat the soup in a sauce pan. Turn off the fire, add the cumin and the yogurt. Stir well. Garnish with basil and, and f you want the soup chunkier, dice up some pieces of boiled carrots or whatever vegetables you have available.
