Oh the delights of growing tomatoes. This little lot are destined for the lunch time soup. I make tomato soup often, but only about now in the year do I make it with fresh ones. The taste is completely different, especially if I also have some fresh basil, which, today, I do.

I thought I had already posted a recipe for tomato soup, but apparently not, so here it is.

500g or so of fresh tomatoes, or a tin of value ones, 31p
1 medium potato, 8p
1 medium onion, 5p
2 tbslp oil, 3p
2 tsps sugar
1 tsp salt
A bay leaf or two if you have it
A good handful of fresh basil if you have it
1 tblsp tomato purée, Asda 49p/200g, 4p
100g red lentils, about 20p/100g, 20p
About a pint of water, maybe a pint and a half
Makes 4 generous bowls full
Total price 71p using a tin, 40p using home grown
per portion, 225 calories, 34g carbs, 8g fat, 9g protein, 8g fibre
Peel and chop the onion. Chop the potato, peel it if you like. Sauté the veg in the oil until soft. If using fresh tomatoes, add them now and let soften.

Add everything else except the basil and simmer gently for about 15-20 minutes. Add just the one pint of water to start with when simmering, you can always add the other half a pint if you want it.

Remove the bay leaves.

With fresh tomatoes, there is the issue of peel. I don’t like too much of it in the soup, but neither do I like peeling them. So I cook them whole, then when the soup is done, I squash them well and fish out the peels into a sieve and push any flesh still sticking to the peel through the sieve.

When you have dealt with the peel, add the basil and whizz everything until smooth. The 2 tblsps oil help to emulsify the soup when whizzed to give a silken texture. If you want to keep the calories to a minimum, use less oil, or skip the sauté stage altogether.

The green flecks are the basil, and also, as the courgette are growing well now, I bunged one of those in there at the sauté stage as well.

The red lentils are in there to give a slug of protein. As well or instead, you could add big green or brown lentils, or the cheffy favourite, puy.

I have successfully made this with just tomatoes, no water at all, to give a deliciously fresh and intense flavour.

The potato and onion gives a little extra texture and flavour, if you don’t have either, this soup would still work well.

This popped up on my Twitter feed this morning. What to sow in the garden in August, I popped over to the blog, and yet again, it’s a lovely blog and I want to read it. There are so many great blogs, I have to limit myself, or I would never get anything else done!

This is a useful guide to what to sow now to maximise yields from the vegetable garden. I can tend to miss out this part and have bare patches when things have been harvested.