This is the perfect thing to make at the end of summer. Make as much as you can be bothered to make and freeze it, for those colder days. Heating up your frozen stash will take you right back to the scent and flavour of summer.

Slow roasting the vegetables brings a beautiful depth of flavour, I don’t even start with onion when making this because you don’t need it. Just toast your vegetable, place in a blender with some stock and blitz, add seasoning and finishing touches and you gave a gloriously flavoursome soup.

You can puree this as smooth as your heart desires but I like a little texture. If you want things really silky you’ll need to remove the capsicum skin. I don’t bother, but to do this just roast the capsicum in halves and then once the skin is all charred remove it from the oven and place in a sealed container to steam. Rub off the skin and add to the blender with the tomatoes. Or… don’t bother and embrace texture.

You can use chicken stock/ bone broth or vegetable stock as the stock in this soup. The best thing to use is Parmesan broth. I freeze any leftover Parmesan rind and once I’ve got at least a couple of pieces I boil it with some garlic and peppercorns (add celery of parsley stems if you have them or a bay leaf) until it disintegrates and everything tastes cheesy. So good and basically free!

A few other notes: only ever use fresh tomatoes, not canned. For the creaminess you can add creme fraiche, cream, sour cream or even full cream milk. It just balances the acidity of the tomatoes and makes everything more delicious. Add a pinch or two of chilli flakes if you want some heat. I don’t heat the stock so that things are easier to blend without exploding in the blender. Make sure you vent your blender when blending hot things!

For the best treat, serve this with a cheese toastie…

Makes 4 serves

Ingredients

1 kilogram fresh tomatoes, halved or quartered

2 red capsicum, seeds removed and chopped the same size as tomatoes

5 garlic cloves

1 tsp salt

2 Tbs olive oil

2 Tbs creme fraiche(see notes above)

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

2/3 cup basil leaves

Approx 500ml stock of choice

Directions

Preheat oven to 160 C (fan forced).

Place tomatoes, capsicum and garlic cloves (skin on) in a tray. Sprinkle over salt and drizzle over olive oily roast for 45 minutes-1hr or until golden and soft.

Remove skin from the garlic and then scrape everything from the tray into a large blender. Add 1 cup of stock (no need to heat) and blend. Add the creme fraiche, Parmesan and basil and blend again. Pour into a pot with remaining stock and bring to your ideal eating temp. Or add stock to the blender if freezing straight away.

Serve with black pepper, Parmesan, more basil and a dollop of creme fraiche.

HH. x