Tomato Basil Soup

It’s summertime and tomatoes are coming on fast and furious.  We love having a vegetable garden and we love to cook too. Our tomatoes aren’t quite ready so when a friend offered some of hers because she had too many and I grabbed them up. I shared some with others but one person never came to get hers so we decided to make tomato soup.

We make our own tomato puree every year. I always make spaghetti sauce from our tomatoes. Spoiled? Most definitely.

We took the tomatoes we had, washed and quartered them.  Tomatoes were put on the stove to get them soft. Next they were put through a hand press to remove seeds and any tough skins.

Then it was back into the cleaned out pot. We added 2/3 of a large red bell pepper with a 1/3 inch slice of onion. Once the pepper and onion were soft, it was added to a VitaMix. You can use any high powered blender or a Cuisinart to create a smooth puree. The soup was put back into the pot to adjust seasoning and and add chopped basil.

I  chopped up both Italian basil and Thai basil. I added them at the last few minutes to let the flavors merge.  Some leaves were left whole to decorate the soup bowls.

Recently I ate some of the leftover soup cold and it was satisfyingly delicious cold as well.  Buon Appetito!

Ingredients:

• 3 1/2 quarts to 4 quarts of tomatoes
• 2/3 to 3/4 of a large bell pepper
• 1 slice of onion cut 1/3 inch thick from a whole onion
• salt and pepper to taste
• Fresh Thai basil to taste
• Fresh Italian basil to taste