Italian Tomato Soup with Basil-Rocket Pesto

I’m pretty sure that it’s not a big secret that I love the Italian kitchen. I mean, I didn’t blog about it for one month straight for nothing. That is why I always try to make any staple dishes with an Italian twist. Mainly, this results in me adding tons of Italian herbs to my recipes.

Tomato soup is one of those dishes. I have made it a hundred times and have been eating it for as long as I remember. My mom prepares it quite often and had so many different recipes for it. The one with the meatballs was a family favourite. Let’s be honest, it still is.

Anyways, this particular soup recipe came to be because the ingredients were available in my kitchen and I wanted soup. It’s always a great and easy idea to use the vegetables that might go bad in a couple of days in a soup.

The pesto-like sauce originated in the same way. The basil and rocket lettuce didn’t have that long anymore. Actually they were looking quite sad. I find that sometimes the best dishes come about in this way! Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Italian Tomato Soup

Servings: 4-6
Time: 45 min
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

1-2 bell peppers
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
800 grams Roma tomatoes
1 liter water
1 stock cube
2 sage leaves
Fresh basil
Rocket lettuce
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt flakes

Used kitchen appliances

Large soup pan
Small pan that can hold 1 liter water
Measuring cup

Preparation

Roughly chop the peppers. Finely chop the onion and garlic. Heat some olive oil in the soup pan and add the vegetables. Bake for 5 min.
Deseed the tomatoes (you can also peel the tomatoes if you prefer, by placing them for about 1 min in boiling water, this does take some extra time though). Place them in the soup pan and let it simmer for another 10 min.
Bring the water to a boil in the small pan and let the stock cube dissolve in it.
Add the water to the vegetables as well as the sage leaves. Bring to a boil, and leave that on a low heat for another 20 min. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
In the meantime, bash the basil and rocket lettuce with a pestle and mortar, along with some olive oil and sea salt flakes, until you have a runny paste. The amount of the ingredients depends on which flavour you would like to dominate and how thick or thin you want the pesto to be. Serve with the soup.