Anyhow, here is a great way to use those tomatoes that have gotten really ripe before you had a chance to eat them! Roasted tomato soup has just a tad bit different flavor from other tomato soups. It's still got the great creamy richness, but there's a hint of the darkened flavor that you get from roasting instead of just boiling.
The ingredients for about 3 quarts of soup:
a nice, heaping panful of ripe tomatoes: enough to layer one 9x13 pan and a 6x9, too.
olive oil
1 to 1.5 teaspoons dried thyme
a couple of pinches of dried parsley
a couple of pinches of dried tarragon
a pinch of seasalt (or whatever salt you have on hand)
Heavy cream - or a 3:1 mixture of evaporated milk and milk from the fridge
How it's done:
Core the tomatoes and place them in the baking dishes, while preheating the oven to 425F. If the tomatoes have blemishes, remove them before roasting, to make them easier to peel later.
Drizzle olive oil over the tomatoes - for this lot, I used about 2 tablespoons. Then pop the pan(s) into oven, and roast for about an hour or until they're browning on top. These large tomatoes took that hour, plus about 40 minutes at 200F before I was satisfied.
Let the tomatoes cool enough to handle, and peel them. Place them in a blender with their juice, and add about 3/4 to 1 cup of cream for every quart of tomato/juice combo. Add the spices, then hit the cream button until it's good and smooth. For this batch, I blended in halves: a little over a quart of tomatoes with an appropriate portion of the spices & cream.
Heat what you're going to eat, and enjoy!
I'm going to play around with this a bit. More spices, maybe a bit of garlic, perhaps adding a cup or two of chicken broth. I'd love to hear how you vary it, too!
This sounds like one of those recipes that takes a long time, and it can. But check this out: I roasted the tomatoes while doing other things, and stuck them in the fridge until I could create the soup. Then, when ready, I peeled them and the rest is history.
