Fresh tomato soup

We were sitting quietly in the house when suddenly there was a tremendous hammering on the door. Our little ironwork bell, with the frogs on top and the clapper, fell off a couple of months ago. A neighbour is repairing it. These things take time.

On opening the door, there was the smiling face of the man who sells hortalizas, or fruit and vegetables from the local market gardens. He has a trailer and the back opens up so that you can choose from the colourful contents.

The tomatoes looked particularly good so a kilo was ordered. This was weighed carefully with a traditional balance scale that has a big hook at one end and a graded arm along which a weight is clicked. Tiny little golden apricots couldn´t be resisted, so a kilo of those as well was ordered, together with half a dozen pears and a couple of bunches of white Spanish onions.

(Pause in typing this to admire a particularly fine gecko, or lizard, that has just walked across top of the window frame. These are great guys as they love eating up pesky insects. Now he has found a warm spot to bask in the sunshine. He must be four or five inches long from nose to tail).

On such a sunny day, there was only one thing to do with the tomatoes, make fresh tomato soup. This is very easy to do.

One kilo of fresh tomatoes
One vegetable or chicken stock cube
Fresh or dried herbs
200ml cream

Cover the tomatoes with water in a pan and bring to the boil. Then reduce heat to a simmer for five or ten minutes until the skins have split. Take off the heat and allow to cool. Skin the tomatoes and chop them up, or whiz them in a food processor. Remove the seeds by pressing the pulp through a sieve, discarding the seeds and pulp. Bring the water to the boil again, then reduce to a simmer and add the stock cube and herbs, then the tomatoes. Simmer gently. Turn off the heat, stir in the cream and serve. You can add salt if you like, but stock cubes are full of salt. A few twists of black pepper are good. You can put a bay leaf into the water at the start. Sometimes we lightly fry an onion and a bit of garlic until soft and add that at the whizzing stage, but we didn´t bother today. As to herbs, we used chopped fresh sage and an herb that is going great guns in Sharon´s huerta, which might be marjoram or might be something else. When collecting the herbs, we cut a branch from the bay tree to hang in the kitchen so that we always have leaves ready. The branch hangs on the pot rack and the leaves dry out nicely.

A search of the shelves in the despensa, or walk-in larder, produced a packet of Atora Herby Dumpling Mix. So, small dumplings were made and dropped into the soup to simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes before serving.

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©Phillip Bruce 2009.