Tomato basil soup

I got back from my awesome vaca over the weekend. However, I am still sunk, groggy, tired & not over my vacation blues yet. This vacation was purely a magical one for me. I met my brother, my nephew & my sister in law after a year. It was a goooood time spent with them & my mom. Bonus – D joined only a few days later ;). It is always awesome to watch your kids & your loved ones kids bond with each other. Adya & Athu bonding with each other was just priceless. Ofcourse, Adya bonding with the rest was also quite awesome but the cherry on top of the cake were those 2 cute cherry boys bonding :). I am increasingly realising that no amount of time spent with your parents & siblings is enough time. I spent a week with them & can’t think of anything majorly useful that we did. We were too busy being jobless. Anywho, my vacation blues were so much that I couldn’t even bring myself to blog :D. Now slowly, I am trying to push those blues away.

Below are my 2 cherries twinning & grinning in their lightning mcqueen PJs.

With this blog coming into light, it’s safe to say the blues are slowly saying bye bye. My childhood (school) friend Ramya got in touch with my a few months back acknowledging my blog & appreciating me for the efforts I am putting into it. She sent me a few pictures of the recipes she tried from my blog & told me how much she & her family liked them. Needless to say, I was on cloud no 9 :). Also, it’s always always great to get back in touch with childhood friends & talk about the good old days, we caught up on our current statuses as well. We were a big girl’s group back in school & we proudly called ourselves Cool 9 :D. I am sadly probably in touch with 3 or 4 of them from that cool 9 but I am overall realising the blog is also helping me get back in touch with not only a few more of these cool 9 but my other lost friends as well :). Anyways, she had messaged me one day asking if I have tried out a tomato basil soup & that she would be happy to try out my version if I had one. I didn’t have one at that time but I told her I would put one up soon. I tried out one for the first time, photographed it (just in case it came out well) & now blogging it since it did come out perfect. I was really really happy with the way this soup turned out & I am definitely going to do this many times over. Especially now since we have fresh basil growing almost always in our mini balcony garden :). The soup is uber easy to make (you don’t not expect me to say this, do you? :). Rams, I am glad we got back in touch; I am glad you like my blog; I am glad you asked me to blog this soup :D. So much gladness right now I tell ya :D.

5 from 1 vote

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Tomato basil soup

Prep Time

5 mins

Cook Time

25 mins

 

Course: Soup, Starters

Cuisine: Indian

Servings: 2 persons

Ingredients

• 2 pods garlic big ones
• 1 no green chilli
• 1 medium onion
• 2 big ripe tomatoes
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
• 1 tsp rock salt
• 1/8 cup beetroot optional
• 1 tbsp butter
• 20 nos basil leaves
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• 1/2 tsp sugar or honey or maple syrup
• 1 tsp fresh cream optional

Instructions

1. Roughly chop the green chilli, garlic, onions, tomatoes & beetroot. 

2. Heat the base of a small pressure cooker & add some butter. 

3. Once heated, throw in the garlic & green chilli. Saute for a few seconds. 

4. Throw in the chopped onion & saute till it starts to brown. 

5. Add the roughly chopped tomatoes along with some salt & pepper. Saute on high heat till it becomes mushy & soft. 

6. Add the chopped beetroot & mix. Check & adjust salt, pepper. 

7. Add 1 cup of water & pressure cook for 4-5 whistles. Turn off the heat & wait for the pressure to release. 

8. Meanwhile, clean & chop basil leaves. 

9. Once the pressure releases from the cooker, open & blend the soup mixture using a hand blender. Blend till smooth. 

10. Strain the mixture using a broad strainer/ sieve. 

11. Add the soup back to the cooker & heat it along with some more water, some milk, a bit of sugar & the chopped basil leaves. 

12. Boil the soup for 1 or 2 minutes. Check & adjust the seasoning at this stage. 

13. Finally, add some cream (if you are) & stir everything in. Turn off the heat. 

14. Serve hot along with some bread. Yummmm! The taste the basil leaves brings to the soup is actually unbelieveable! 

Recipe Notes

1. If adding fresh cream, take a small bowl & add some water. Mix well. This ensures it doesn't stand out as lumps when added to the soup.
2. If you don't have beetroots, you can add some carrots. However, both these are optional & mainly for the colour than anything else. But the colour is just beautiful with this addition. 
3. You can skip the sugar or sweetener if your beetroot, tomatoes offer the required amount of sweetness. For my taste buds, 1/2 tsp sugar did the trick. 
4. The basil flavours gets stronger if you don't consume the soup immediately. So don't cook the basil leaves in the soup for more than 1 or 2 minutes. 
5. If you don't strain the soup, you are going to have a slightly coarse consistency soup. I wanted a restaurant like soup & hence wanted to strain. However, not straining is obviously healthier. 

Stepwise pictures

Heat the base of a small pressure cooker with some butter. Once heated, throw in roughly chopped garlic & green chilli. Saute for a few seconds.

Throw in the roughly chopped onions at this stage & saute.

Saute till the onion starts to turn colour. Needn’t let it brown too much.

Throw in the roughly chopped tomatoes, some salt & pepper at this stage. Saute on high heat for a few minutes till the tomatoes turn mushy & soft.

Throw in roughly chopped beetroot at this stage. Mine was cooked already.

Add 1 cup water & pressure cook for 4-5 whistles. Turn off the heat & wait for the pressure to release.

Meanwhile wash, rough chop & set aside the basil leaves.

Once the pressure gets released from the cooker, blend using a hand blender till smooth.

If you are using a mixer, wait till the mixture cools down & transfer only the solid part & not the water part for grinding.

Run this mixture through a sieve to remove off the skin & seeds. If you are an idiot like me, you would use a small one first before realising you can using a big sieve 😀

My MIL reminded me that we have a big sieve 🙂 but it was kinda too late. I already had struggled with the smaller sieve hehe.

See that colour, it’s pure beauty because of the beetroots added in.

Transfer this mixture back to the pressure cooker & heat it on the gas stove. Add another cup water, some milk, chopped basil leaves, some sugar or any sweetener & bring it to a boil.

Just within 1 or 2 minutes, you will be able to smell the beautiful basil leaves infuse with the soup. Add some fresh cream if you have stock of it. Turn off the heat.

Serve hot alongside some bread. Yummm!!! I toasted my bread, cut into pieces & let it sink in the soup :D.