Santanu
Santanu

Food

Fresh Tomato Soup

A description of cover image.
Fresh Totamo Soup

The only soup I had ever tried making was carrot soup in Paris, and that too in bleak winter. A big thanks to my French teacher for sharing the recipe en Français. Recently, I went to the local vegetable market and saw tomatoes, and I got so tempted that without thinking, I bought two kilos. Then I brainstormed a bit and the idea of soup came as an escape. Here is my 2 cents recipe. If you’re craving something sweet and sour at the same time, just have a bowl of creamy tomato soup to satisfy your desire as an appetizer.

Ingredients

  • One kilo Tomato – boiled, peeled, and deseeded.
  • Two/three carrots – chopped into tiny pieces.
  • One big Onion finely chopped.
  • Few cloves of garlic.
  • One red chili.
  • One Bay leaf.
  • ½ tsp cumin seeds.
  • Black pepper.
  • Nutmeg.
  • 2 tbsp Olive oil / ½ tbsp butter.
  • Juice from one fresh Orange.
  • Low-fat cream or thick yoghurt.
  • Dried Basil / Parsley leaves - optional.
  • Salt to taste.

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil/ butter and fry cumin seeds, bay leaf, garlic, and onion with a pinch of salt. When the onion turns golden, add carrots and continue frying at low flame. Once the carrot is tender, add tomato and fry for a few minutes.
  2. Make puree in a grinder (remove bay leaf before). Add water according to the thickness required. Put the blended soup back in the pan. Bring to boil and cook for 5 minutes on medium heat.
  3. Now add freshly squeezed orange juice and cream after removing from heat. Season it with nutmeg and fresh black pepper. Garnish with a couple of parsley or basil sprigs if any and serve hot with either croutons or bread slice.

Best news is that “Bread-Talk” boutique has recently opened at Vashi. It is a famous bakery chain from Singapore, and they do cater to good quality of various bread as well as desserts. But sadly, the dessert I got from there was too creamy, spongy, and sugary. I will say tasteless to my taste buds as these kinds of pastries are very popular throughout India. After tasting European pastries, I find these ones as a concept of western baked goods mixed with Asian ingenuity makes cool-looking pastries that are hit-and-miss at a certain point. While the multi-cereal bread which I got was awesome.

15 Nov   2007

My baby shower

A traditional Bengali one