needing inspiration

(Yesterday)



Since neither my parents nor grandparents were home, I had to prepare dinner for my sister and myself, which would have been fun had I only realised we were mysteriously out of aioli sooner, which would have allowed us to have dinner before 8.30. (This was because I had already prepared crudites for dipping before realising we were out of the dip.) The main deal was the tomato soup because we weren't exactly famished and dying to have dinner.

Anyway I'm really happy with how the soup's turned out so I'll share this very rough and arbitrary recipe with you (that would be extremely unhelpful if you prefer following recipes with religious word-for-word precision and use calipers to measure ingredients for size).

Ingredients: (In arbitrary units)
3 units tomatoes
2 units onions
1 unit of garlic cloves (leave unpeeled)
1.67 units ground paprika, basil, thyme and oregano (fresh, dried, whatever.)
0.01 units salt and pepper (preferably freshly ground) (to taste)
0.5 units olive oil
4 units chicken stock (you may also use water but I have this idiosyncratic repulsion towards adding water to anything I'm cooking, apart from boiling)

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C. You have to do this early, or face a seemingly eternal wait for the oven to heat up as your tomatoes languish in the heat and humidity.
Quarter onions and tomatoes. You will end up with chunky wedges. Place them on a baking dish with sides that can hold the juices in. Spread out onions and tomatoes on the dish. Place your unpeeled garlic cloves inside. Splash olive oil all over, trying to cover every surface with as little oil as possible. It is certain that one will fail. Do not worry too much about this. Sprinkle/scatter ground paprika, basil, thyme and oregano, and make a mental note of where you left the garlic, because you have to squeeze out the golden mush later.

Place in oven, and grill for about 30-40 minutes. The longer you grill, the more the sugars in the food caramelise, and then you get this really rich and robust flavour. (Okay, so I cheated and sprinkled some granulated sugar after 20 minutes in hope of enhancing that sweetness in such a short amount of time. But anything goes, really. There's no need to go postal over little things like that.)

Later, once you've found the courage to handle the very hot tray/dish thingy, you can start scooping out the hopefully lightly-browned tomatoes and onions. You should, at this point, realise that the garlic is still in there. At this stage, the insides would have softened and you can squeeze it out easily, much like a whitehead. If you want a chunkier soup as opposed to a smoothly pureed one which may evoke instant-soup nightmares for the very sensitive, separate some pieces of tomatoes and onion and leave aside.

Note: there may be brown bits stuck at the bottom of the pan. This is gold. Put the pan over some heat, splash some chicken stock/red wine and scrape up the brown bits. There is a more glamorous term for this, and it's called "deglazing". Add this to the rest of the ingredients.

Dump everything in a pot that's big enough for soup (so that the liquids don't bubble out when it starts simmering and boiling), and throw in your chicken stock. It should seem watery enough to worry you. This is normal. Remember to turn on the heat and simmer, half-covered, for about 15 minutes.

Once you're satisfied, puree the contents of the pot to death. (I'm kidding. You can pick your preferred consistency.) Add the other tomato and onion chunks if you did reserve any, and serve.