Tomato soup

Tomato Soup

Tomato soup, yum! This classic recipe can be adjusted to your tastes in many ways. It’s a great soup for starters, or fill up your bowl and serve with toast for a main course.

Ingredients

All tablespoons are the standard 15ml tablespoon. If you’re using an Australian 20ml tablespoon, adjust the number of spoonfuls accordingly.

8 cups of tomatoes (US or metric). You can use fresh tomatoes with the skins removed, or use canned tomatoes as I have.

1 onion, chopped

parsley

1 bay leaf

1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

6 tablespoons of butter – that’s 80gm or 2 1/2oz

4 tablespoons of plain flour

Salt, pepper and cayenne pepper to taste

Optional for serving – sour cream and extra parsley or butter and shaved fresh Parmesan cheese

This recipe makes 6-8 serves

Method

Put the tomatoes, onion, parsley, cloves, pepper and the bay leaf  in a saucepan.

Bring to a simmer for 20 minutes.

Remove the bay leaf.

Take off the heat and blend roughly.

In a different saucepan melt your butter over a very low heat. Add the flour, stir well and cook for one minute.

Add a few ladles full of soup to the flour mixture and mix to thin it out.

Put the blended soup back over the heat. Add the flour mixture to your soup and stir well until it’s as thick as you want.

Add cayenne pepper, salt and nutmeg to taste.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream or cheese sprinkled on top.

Fruit marshmallows

Fruit Marshmallows

If you make your own marshmallows from this recipe you’ll never want to eat store bought ones again!

Make them in fancy shapes or float them on top of a bubbling mug of witch’s brew.

Ingredients

28gm/1oz of gelatine

240ml or 1US cup of fruit juice

2 teaspoons of essence to match your juice (optional)

490gm/1lb of white sugar

1 or 2 tablespoons each of icing sugar and cornflour (icing sugar is known as powdered or confectioner’s sugar in the US and you may know cornflour as corn starch).

butter and cornflour to grease your dishes

Method

Butter the dish you’ll be setting your marshmallow in and dust it lightly with the cornflour/icing sugar mixture.

Put the gelatine in a tiny bit of boiling water to soak.

Put the juice into a saucepan over a low flame, add the sugar and mix.

Bring it to a slight boil until the sugar has melted and continue to heat until the temperature reaches 217 degrees F or 105 degrees C. Do not stir it at this stage.

Pour it onto the gelatine mix and beat with an electric mixer.

Pour into your prepared dish and leave to set.

Cut into squares and roll in the remaining cornflour/icing sugar mixture.