The Easiest Tomato Soup

After making this you will NEVER buy tomato soup again. This is amazingly simple and amazingly cheap, not to mention healthy. Now if you don't have tomatoes growing in your garden or it is now Winter and you have none preserved from your Summer crops I would recommend you go to your fruit market and have a look to see if they have any on big discount - you know the area where they put the fruit and vegetables that are a bit too soft to sell for full price? These soft tomatoes are perfect for this soup and will not only make a quality soup but a lovely inexpensive dinner or entree.

Now I cannot take the credit for this soup. This is from Stephanie Alexanders, Cooks Companion. My changes to the recipe are very minimal.

Serves 6

Ingredients:
60 g Butter
1 Onion Sliced
1.5kg Very Ripe Red Tomatoes seeded
1 Ltr of very good quality chicken stock
2 tbsp Potato Flour

1. Melt butter and saute' onion in a large pot until softened
2. Add tomato and simmer gently on low for about 20 minutes or until cooked - they need to be falling apart.
3. Add stock to pot
   
4. Using a stick hand blender (the quickest method) puree' in the pot
5. OR if you don't have a stick blender put stock and a food processor to puree'
6. OR if you don't have 4 or 5 above puree' tomato in a food mill add to pot and add stock
   
7. In a small tea cup mix the potato flour with a little water and mix to a thick paste
8. Add a ladle full of soup to the cup and mix then add all to the pot of soup
9. Season with salt and ppper to taste
   
10. Simmer gently until hot
11. Spoon into bowls and serve with hot crusty bread

Optional: Sprinkle served bowls of soup with roughly chopped basil.
If you like your soup a little thinner add a little more chicken stock.

Freezing: This can be frozen.

Broccoli Soup

Too much broccoli? Don't despair.

This current crop I have made 3 pots of this soup so far. At the time of writing this we have harvested over 5 kilos of broccoli over a 2-3 month period.

It quite possibly sounds awful - broccoli soup - we even turned our nose up at the thought. But when you have working on a budget and you have an abundance of broccoli you overcome any doubt and give it a crack. We have been pleasantly surprised.

Even though we are in Spring this soup is a great super quick nutrious meal with a warm bread roll (home made). The 3rd pot will make it to the freezer this time.

At the time of this posting I used the last of shop purchased garlic (can't waste it) and shop purchased onions (ours are not ready yet). Because of time constraints I did not have any home made chicken stock so I used the Massel brand of stock cube because it is the most natural one on the market. If you don't use home made chicken stock keep the salt you add to a minimum.

This recipe is my adaption from a recipe by Sophia Young published on www.taste.com.au

Ingredients (serves 3)

• 1 1/ tbsp olive oil
• 1 onions, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 (200g) potato, cut into 3cm pieces
• 500g broccoli, stem and all - particularly if it fresh from your garden
• 1/4 cup (125ml) pouring cream
• Parsley chopped
• Season with Salt and Pepper to taste
  

Method

1. Heat oil in a heavy-based saucepan over low-medium heat and cook onions, garlic for 5 minutes. Add potatoes and 5 cups chicken stock and bring to the boil. Add broccoli and simmer for 10 minutes or until just tender. Cool slightly then blend in the pot using a stick blender or in batches in a conventional blender.
   
2. Reheat. Stir in cream and season to taste with pepper.

Note: If you are freezing this soup do not add the cream until ready to reheat.

Source

Notebook: - July 2006, Page 113

Recipe by Sophia Young