I am under the weather today, that sinus headache I mentioned yesterday has transformed into all over aches today. So following Mr. Lacer’s lead, I thought I’d make myself some tomato soup, which is what Mr. Lacer always does when he’s poorly, except Mr. Lacer’s tomato soup is made by Mr. Heinz and is from a tin. Me, I had to make mine from scratch didn’t I? So I had a go at Nigella’s Italian tomato and pasta soup from Kitchen, now I don’t like cooking with fresh tomatoes as it is, I think they can be one of the faffiest vegetables around, so god knows what possessed me to do it today. But I did, I peeled them, deseeded them and after a rather long cooking time and a squish through a sieve later (Nigella recommends a food mill, which I actually have, but all that turning, I wasn’t feeling that energetic) and I wasn’t left with a soup, I was left with a broth, so I panicked a bit and added too much soup pasta in an attempt to thicken it up and well the photo there on the left shows what happened . . .
So ok, there was a considerable amount of user error here but even if I had added the correct amount of pasta I think it would have been quite a watery soup, which is fine if you like watery soups but I prefer my soups smooth, thick, with an almost baby food like consistency, which hey, looking at the photo again, that’s what I got, baby pasta! Anyway, after all that effort I was going to eat at least some of it and it was passable with a good helping of parmesan cheese and actually the flavour wasn’t that bad but personally I would not recommend making this soup without big tomatoes (mine were plum but not that big, well three were, two weren’t) and make sure those tomatoes are as fresh as you can get as well.
