Soup. It's good for you. Yes, really.

For some reason, we ended up with a boatload of tomatoes in our fridge. I don't even know where they all came from, though I have my suspicions. You may even say that the person most likely to have brought them all in the house was me. I'm not pointing fingers or anything. But what's a girl to do with a bucket of tomatoes?

Make soup, duh!

I handed in my pre-final version of my thesis on Monday and spent the rest of the day searching for recipes that did not involve canned tomatoes (which there are surprisingly little of, I might add) and finally found one to my liking. Of course, while I was searching, the BF decided that what he really, really wanted for dinner was quiche (he discovered the miracle that is parmezan and is trying to incorporate it into at least one meal for the past two weeks).

Yesterday I finally got to try out this recipe I found and tweaked with the help of the BF. It involved lots of tomatoes...


and lots of basil.



And meatballs, because tomato soup needs meatballs. I'll spare you the raw meat pictures, though, so here they are about 5 seconds before I scooped two up and scarfed them down. (and then had to go and get a drink of water because I burned my tongue.)



In the end, it all came together to be a lovely, spicy tomato soup that tasted fresh and creamy (even though there's no cream in there, imagine that) and will be made more often!


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Tomato soup (original recipe from Scandi Foodie, but I adapted it to what I had in the fridge)
serves 4-6

olive oil
2 shallots or 1 onion, finely chopped
1.5 kg tomatoes cut in quarters
3 small spring onions
1 cup vegetable stock
fresh basil, about 2 handfuls
thyme (mine wasn't fresh, but it got the job done)
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tbsp honey

Take a large saucepan and heat some olive oil. Sauté the shallot/onion for a couple of minutes.

Add the tomatoes and stir, sauté for a couple more minutes.

Add the vegetable stock and the spring onions and bring to a boil, let cook for 30 minutes.

Add the basil, pepper, thyme, honey and any other spices you want to add (though I must say, this was plenty), and puree this with a stick blender until smooth. Taste, and add more pepper or herbs if needed (mine was verrrry spicy because I thought I hadn't put enough pepper in and overdid it on the second go, but it was good, so go spicy if you like!). The BF decided that we had fresh basil and should use it, so he cut up some more basil in little strips and added that just before we took the pot out to the table, so ours was very basil-y.

If you're like me, and want meatballs in your tomato soup, add them now and cook the soup for another 10-15 minutes. If not, serve your soup while it's hot! And serve it with a nice piece of bread, or, like us, with crackers and boursin. Easy meal, and oh, so delicious!