Roasted green tomato soup

This year, my lovely niece Lou went a bit mad and planted a lot of seeds and a few weeks into her gardening, she ran out of space, so she very kindly gave me 2 tomato plants, which I promptly planted in the garden, since this year's potato crop didn't really happen. The tomato plants grew and grew and outgrew the supports I'd put in for them and kept growing. They also set a lot of fruit and I mean a lot. The variety is called Tigerella because the tomatoes are red with greenish stripes, so very pretty. Taste-wise, they aren't much different from the shop-bought stuff, but Lou had warned me about that.

After what seemed like a very long wait, the first reddish blush appeared and I started picking tomatoes, leaving them on the window sill for a couple of days to redden and soften. Very soon, I was struggling to keep up, so I blended 3 batches of 400 g and froze for cooking. Then I made my tomato sauce, but allowed it to boil down and become quite thick. This went into the freezer as well with the aim to have it ready for a pizza.

Now the autumn has arrived and it's getting cold and rainy, there are still loads of tomatoes left, but they aren't going red as fast, so I've started researching recipes for green tomatoes. I found this website which collates ten different recipes. I made two jars with pickled green tomatoes that were listed there, but I increased the amount of tomatoes to fill up the jars, since the original amount of 375 g barely made it to the middle. The liquid in the recipe was way too much, but it is fairly similar to the one for the royal pickle, so I'll used it to top up there when the turshiya vegetables are ready tomorrow. In fact, this method is very similar to the turshiya. Yes, I'm using this weekend, when Lundulph is away for a couple of days, to do some pickling and prepare all the pungent liquids, along with the annual clean of the oven.

However, there seems to be no end to the green tomatoes, the plants still look full of them and I must have picked at least 4 kg this weekend. I quite like tomato soup, so I searched for green tomato soup and came across this recipe, which seemed reasonable and I had all the ingredients. It didn't seem to have enough flavourings, so here are my tweaks to it.

Ingredients

1 kg green tomatoes
2 medium sized brown onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp sunflowerseed oil
vegeta (or salt), black pepper, Korean chilli flakes
5 dl water
3 Oxo cubes chicken stock
100 g baby spinach
1 dl fresh dill
1 dl fresh tarragon
½ dl fresh basil

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 220 °C.
2. Wash the tomatoes, quarter and remove the fibrous area around the stalk. Peel and cut the onions in 8 wedges. Peel and cut the garlic in smaller pieces.
3. Brush a roasting tin with the oil, add the tomatoes, onion and garlic and sprinkle with vegeta (salt), black pepper and Korean chilli flakes, then stir well to get all the vegetables coated in the oil.
4. Bake the vegetables for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through.
5. Bring the water to the boil in a deep casserole and break up the Oxo cubes and add to the water. Stir until they've dissolved fully.
6. Add the baby spinach and simmer for a few minutes until it wilts, then keep warm until the tomatoes are ready.
7. Prepare the dill, tarragon and basil by washing and removing the stalks.
8. When the tomatoes are soft, they are ready. Add to the casserole along with the fresh herbs, then blend with a handmixer until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.
9. If you want to turn it into a sauce, replace on the hob and simmer on low heat, stirring occasionally until it's reduced and thickened further.

When I tasted it after blending, I thought it was OK, but it felt like something was missing. I was wondering if I should blitz in a handful of cashew nuts, but decided to leave it as is. Lundulph also tasted it and thought it would make a very nice sauce for fish, especially cod, but possibly also salmon. So we'll have it as soup tonight, but I'll bake some salmon and see how that works as well. If there's any soup left after that, I will add some cashews and see how that changes things. So the overall conclusion is that this needs a bit more work, but has potential.