Black Gumbo

With the large yields I have been blessed with, I thought it would be a good time to try some fresh tomato soup. We had some a few weeks ago at a friend's house and I loved it, so I sought some recipes and decided to give it a try. (Pics take a while to load)

Most of the recipes online are either basic soup recipes or fancy gourmet efforts. I decided to try a simple recipe that stuck to the essentials. I found many recipes that met the required ease level, and because most of them called for ingredients I did not have (nor did I have the inclination to go get them) I opted to study the general idea and then make my own soup. Here's what I did.

These were gathered out of the garden today and from this group of Super Marzano Romas, a few Big Beefs, tons of Ravello baby Romas and some various others (including a huge Purple Cherokee not pictured), I started chopping.

Step 1
Chop up enough tomatoes to fill a large sauce pot. How do you like that for accurate measurements? I guess its about six to eight cups worth. Chop a large onion, three cloves of garlic, a few stalks of celery and sautee them in a stew pot until soft. I used a few teaspoons worth (eyeballed) of olive oil in the pot. Many recipes call for a carrot at this stage. I didn't have one. I added a few good dashes of sea salt and fresh ground black pepper:



Step 2
Add tomatoes once the other veggies are soft. Cook this until the tomatoes are soft and pulpy, mine took 15 minutes on high heat:



Step 3
Once the tomatoes are soft, add a teaspoon (mine was heaping) of whole wheat flour, this gives some thickening boost. Many recipes call for stock of some sort. I don't think it is necessary if you want pure tomato flavor, but I added a cup and a half (estimated) of beef broth to mine for a little flavor kick. I also added those two stems of basil seen in the photo above at this point and let it cook another few minutes. Here's what it looked like:



Step 4
Puree the whole thing. I used a hand held blender thing my wife swears by and did it in five or six small batches. It worked fine. Next, strain the puree through a sieve, you want to remove the skins and whatever chunks did not get liquefied if you have picky eaters. Some skins will get through, no big deal:



Step 5
I returned my soup to the stove in the the large sauce pot, the stew pot is now too large. Simmer until reduced by 1/3 or so. It is tasty and good now, but if you want a creamier soup, reducing it will make room for cream or milk.



Step 6
Once reduced, add cream to your preference. We used whole milk instead to cut down on fat, and it was just perfect. The cold milk reduced the heat enough to enjoy immediately. I overdid the pepper for many people's tastes, but we like it spicy. All the recipes state that the soup can be frozen if you don't add the dairy component until re-heating and serving.



Once tested by my daughter, I received the thumbs up. I love it and think this is a great way to get garden fresh tomatoes on the table. It was once of the best basic tomato soups I've ever had!