Tomato soup

Last weekend Brian came home with a bag of ripe tomatoes, a large bag of ripe tomatoes.  Can you make soup with them? he asked.  Well, I told him, I can, but it's a very fiddly job.  At which he got all huffy, and said, don't bother then.  So, to prove how fiddly I set to on Monday morning. First I had to blanch the tomatoes and remove the skins.  Then cut the tomatoes in half and remove the pips.  I did a couple, but was just too fiddly so left them in, but did cut the fruit into halves.

An onion was chopped and gently fried in a large pan, the tomatoes added, and all cooked together until soft. Stock was added and all cooked until soft.  Cooled slightly and then put into my new food processor and processed.  To remove the seeds I put the soup through a fine sieve (which took an age to do) and put the resulting liquid back into the pan and added  tomato purée and sugar.  I heated it all through again to make sure the sugar and tomato purée were incorporated. 

Two hours later I had finished the washing up and we had soup for six.  

Brian had to agree, it is a fiddly and time consuming task making tomato soup, but we both agreed it was very very good.

But, because of the time taken, not forgetting the fuel consumption, Brian decided we need a soup maker and set off for town to buy one - he had a store voucher, and it was on offer in a pre-Christmas sale, so it was a bargain.

We have yet to use it, since we only finished the soup today.  Hopefully I will make some tomorrow and I will let you know how I get on.