Anne Myers

When I decided to stop writing for the delicious I love cooking, I was very keen to share my kind of food with you. This unpretentious, beautiful website (Me bragging? Noooo…. Just sharing personal opinion ) is geared primarily for the busy working mom with very little time on her hands to get a hearty, delicious and easy dinner on the table.

As I am no longer part of a young family that is always in a hurry, I can now indulge in doing what I wanted to do all those years raising my daughter and son as a single mom: I can cook slow, simple, sensual, beautiful, delicious food. But truth is, mostly I am so involved with work and rushing to make deadlines, that many of my meals consist of cheese and bread! However, once or twice a week, when my domestic worker comes in, we don our aprons and cook – slowly and deliciously. Here is one such a recipe. This is not an original recipe. I cannot credit the originator as nobody knows who developed the first tomato soup recipe. Nor who roasted the tomatoes first. But here is my version and an adaptation of my recipe for this yummy Tomato and Paprika Stew.

As always, this recipe calls for your personal flair. Add as much garlic, salt and sugar as you like and you can obviously add more chilli or garlic. It can also be the basis for a rich tomato stew or bredie, as the recipe for the stew (hyperlinked above) illustrates.

Slow-roasted Tomato Soup

• 1.2 kg ripe plum tomatoes
• 4 – 6 large garlic cloves, left whole
• 2 large onions, cut into medium wedges
• some thyme sprigs to taste
• 5 ml dried chilli flakes (or to taste)
• olive oil
• salt, milled black pepper and sugar
• 30 ml tomato paste
• 250 – 500 ml prepared chicken or vegetable stock
• 45 ml melted butter (optional)
• 45 ml flour (optional)
• 45 ml finely chopped parsley
• 65 ml chopped basil
• 250 ml cream (optional)
• To serve: croutons and basil leaves

Place the tomatoes, garlic, onions and thyme sprigs in a large baking dish, sprinkle with the chilli flakes and season to taste (rather liberally then lightly) with salt, pepper and sugar. Drizzle with oil and roast (undisturbed) for 60 minutes or longer at 190 ºC or until lightly browned and sticky from being caramelized by the heat. Remove from oven, fish out the thyme stalks and allow to cool down a bit.

Process the tomatoes with the onion and garlic and pan juices in a processor or with a stick blender in a large bowl until smooth. If you like, you can now push the puree through a sieve.

Place the puree into a saucepan, add the tomato paste and stir in as much stock as you like. Be careful, you do not want to lose the intensity of the roast tomato flavour by thinning it down too much, but on the other hand, you do not want a soup so thick you can stick a spoon in it! At this stage, if you want, you can bind everything together by making a paste (roux) of the melted butter and flour and stirring nuggets of it into the soup until it is to your liking.

Once you are happy with the consistency, stir in the cream (if using) and herbs. Taste and then add more seasoning if you like: salt, pepper and sugar even a fresh addition of chopped herbs, crushed garlic and chilli flakes. Serve topped with croutons, basil leaves and a drizzle of olive oil.

Serves 6

Have a deliciously slow week!