Tomato Soup

By blum099

Ingredients

• You will need:
• Optional: You can puree the cooked tomatoes in a blender instead of crushing them through a sieve... see directions.
• 2 celery stalks, cut in large pieces
• 2 carrots, cut in large pieces
• 1 small parsnip, cut in large pieces
• 1 large garlic clove, sliced
• 1 onion, cut in in quarters
• 10 cups water
• 1 TBS kosher salt, or to taste
• 2 lbs( about 6-7 large) ripe, garden-fresh tomatoes
• 3 TBS olive oil
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 1/4-1/3 cup short grain rice/orzo*
• 1 heaping TBS tomato paste
• extra salt, if needed
• freshly ground pepper, to taste
• can substitute with homemade thin pasta(taitei) or semolina dumplings... or can be left out completely.
• Extra:
• chopped lovage( leustean)
• chopped celery leaves
• ground pepper, to taste

Preparation

Step 1

Directions:
1. Clean/peel/cut up vegetables (except tomatoes) and place in a large soup pot.
2. Add 10 cups of water and salt.
3. Bring to a boil and cover... lower heat and simmer for about 20-30 minutes. I used my pressure cooker for 20 minutes. The longer you cook the vegetables, the better the flavor of the stock.
4. Remove regular pot lid after about 20 minutes, and add the whole tomatoes(or process the tomatoes and skip step 5). Cook for and additional 10-20 minutes. If using a pressure cooker, release pressure after 20 minutes and then add the tomatoes and place the lid back, bring to pressure and continue to cook for an additional 10 minutes.
5. Remove tomatoes from stock and place in a fine strainer, crush to release all the juice. Some tomatoes may be too soft to remove from the stock... it's ok, you just want the bigger pieces of tomato. Place the cooked tomatoes in a fine strainer. and crush to release as much juice/pulp as possible. The idea is to leave behind only the tomato skin and seeds. You can pour some stock over the pulp to help the pulp move down through the strainer. (Sidenote: If you want, you can always use a high speed blender to blend the tomatoes without having to worry about losing too much of the tomato pulp... just puree the tomatoes and add it in step 4.)
6. After most of the pulp/juice from the tomatoes have been pushed through the strainer, pour the rest of the vegetables and stock from the pot ... passing the liquid and vegetables through the strainer.
7. Press the vegetables down a bit to release any remaining liquid... you don't want to press too, too hard... just enough to get all the liquid.

8. Set tomato stock aside.
9. In the same pot, heat the 3 TBS oil and add the minced onion. Cook for 7-10 minutes or until onion is soft and gets a slight golden color.
10. Add rice/orzo and cook for 30 seconds-1 minute.... if you don't want to use rice or orzo you can skip this step.
11. Add the tomato paste to the rice and onion mixture( or to the onion only, if not using rice) and cook for an additional minute.
12. Pour the reserved tomato stock over onion/rice mixture and whisk to combine.
13. Bring to a boil, cover pot with lid and lower heat to a simmer. Cook until rice/orzo is cooked... another 10-15 minutes. (Sidenote: At this point, if you haven't used rice or orzo and want to use homemade dumplings/pasta, you can add it now and adjust cooking time until dumplings/pasta is cooked through... if you would like to make the semolina dumplings, just click on the above link(under ingredient list) for directions. Adjust seasoning... I added an extra 1 tsp of kosher salt. Add freshly ground pepper.
14. Garnish with chopped celery leaves and/or chopped lovage. You could also use parsley... or even basil.