Wednesday 4 April 2012

Moroccan Tomato Soup

A nice soup to get into your repertoire is a good pureed tomato soup. The fundamental here is to NOT have it look and taste like tomato sauce. Easier said than done, but when armed with a few eclectic flavouring profiles and pro-grade finishing techniques, your tomato soup will be the talk of the interwebs.

Pictured above is a bowl of spicy Moroccan tomato soup with mint chiffonade and basmati rice. You can make this with ripe roma tomatoes, or very good quality canned plum tomatoes. Avoid the really cheap stuff if you can...the product is generally watery, overly acidic and bitter, from my experience.
The recipe, scaled down from a 14L batch to a more home-friendly 4 liters, is as follows:

Ingredients:

3 L of ripe roma tomato, quartered
3 cans of coconut milk
1 small white onion, diced
10 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tbsp dried ground cumin
1 tbsp dried ground coriander
1 tsp of cinnamon
1/4 cup curry powder
1/2 tsp dry chili flakes
Kosher salt and pepper
1 pinch of saffron (10 threads) - optional
1 cup of mango (puree or chunks)
Water or vegetable stock
Cooked basmati rice
Mint if desired

Method:

1. In a large heavy bottomed saute pot, like a Dutch Oven, bring 2 oz. of vegetable oil to temp over med-high heat. Saute the onion, garlic and all the spices except the saffron together and allow to cook down a little, until onions are translucent.
2. Add the tomato quarters to the pot and stir in well. Add the coconut milk and mango, being sure to rinse out the cans with water, and add to the pot, for a total of 1 liter of water. Add saffron threads.
3. Allow to cook over medium heat for 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper
4. Puree the soup thoroughly with an immersion blender until smooth and velvety. This soup may need to be passed through a china cap to remove tomato skins, depending on how well your blender works.
5. Readjust seasoning, and cook a further 20 minutes.
6. Remove from heat, add cold cooked rice to your liking (I would suggest 2 cups). Stir in. If you wish to eat right away, return to the burner.

Serve with yogurt, flatbreads, etc., and garnish with mint. A nice presentation is to make a timbale (mold) of hot rice in the center of every bowl, and ladel soup around it, as illustrated.

Enjoy!
~Chef D