Posted on August 09, 2016 by Kate Halsall
This is a story about improvising – and what’s more, improvising successfully!! When I went to make my tea yesterday, I certainly hadn’t planned to make a roast aubergine and tomato soup! Most of all – I hadn’t thought about having cold soup!
But have you ever had one of those days where you partner has said that there’s “loads of food in the fridge” so you get ready to prepare your evening meal, open the fridge and low and behold – half of bag of very wilted spinach, two smaller than average aubergines, weary looking chard, some homemade pesto, 1 carton of baby plum tomatoes and some out of date mushrooms………hmmmm….it wasn’t quite what I had envisioned!! Even my fall back position of lentil curry was a non starter as we had no lentils either!
I have a great couple of websites I use when I know what food I have left in the fridge:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/ingredients
But Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall came to my rescue yesterday – what a hero! One of his cook books is on our kitchen worktop. As I started flicking through the book, I came across this Roast Aubergine and Tomato soup recipe. I didn’t quite have all the ingredients – it asked for tinned tomatoes which I didn’t have but I did have some plum tomatoes in the fridge. It asked for cloves of garlic, again I had run out of those, but I had lazy garlic in the fridge……and so I got cooking.
Ingredients
- 2 of the worlds smallest aubergines (in my opinion)
- 250g of baby plum tomatoes (just about in date)
- 1tblspoon rapseed oil
- 1teaspoon garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
- I cut the aubergines in half and then sliced them. I put them in a baking dish, drizzled with the oil and added salt and pepper. I roasted them for 30 mins at 190.
- I zapped my tomatoes in the blender so that they were just smaller than “roughly chopped”
- I added the tomatoes, garlic and cumin powder to the aubergines, added a little water and cooked the mix together for 25mins
- I blitzed the lot in the blender until smooth
The idea was to reheat the soup once I had returned from work, but I was hungry so tried a little spoonful whilst it was still in the blender – IT WAS DELICIOUS. More than that, it was refreshing, light, and really damn tasty! But if the idea of cold soup does put you off then heat it up and it will still be as delicious!