Eggplant and Tomato Soup with Basil Cream

It continues with the soup pleasure! I had written day before yesterday that I shopped for two soups. I just couldn’t decide on one of the two from the Garland’s Lodge cookbook.

This soup is also vegan - except for the cream. It gets a very spicy flavor from roasting some of the vegetables in the oven first. For this I cut a smaller eggplant into 1 cm thick slices, as well as an onion. I also add one red and one yellow pepper, halved and seeded, and 2 tomatoes, halved. I put the vegetables in an oven preheated to 210° on a baking sheet with some olive oil and roast the vegetables for 30 minutes. The last 5 minutes I turn on the grill, so I get the skins of tomato and bell pepper afterwards better off (unfortunately, the red bell pepper as always refuses to his skin, no matter, then he comes just so in the soup).

Parallel to the roasted vegetables, I cut two carrots, three celery stalks and two cloves of garlic into pieces and steam them together with the spices (1 tsp salt, 1 tsp marjoram, 1 tsp thyme, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, 1 tsp ground coriander seeds, a handful of basil leaves) for a quarter of an hour in some olive oil until soft. Then the roasted vegetables go into the pot, along with 1.5 liters of water and simmer for three quarters of an hour. Then, with a magic wand, add the soup - I’m getting used to these pureed soups - and chop vigorously. Finally, salt again properly and season with some lemon juice.

Now all that’s needed is the cream. I take a little lemon juice, a handful of basil leaves, coarsely chopped, and 2 tsp sour cream, which I first puree again with the wand until the cream becomes greenish. Then I add half a pot of sour cream and some salt, stirring it in with a spoon.

Off with the soup on the plate and again is soup happiness.

pureed soup with eggplant, tomato, celery, bell peppers, olive oil, with basil cream