Roasted Tomato Soup with Corn Salsa Recipe

Roasted Tomato Soup with Corn Salsa Recipe

If I read one more recipe that begins by saying that the recipe is the perfect way to use up the overload of summer tomatoes, I’m going to scream. Okay, in deference to my neighbors, I won’t. But to me, there is no such thing as having too many tomatoes. That’s just crazy talk.

Roasted Tomato Soup with Corn Salsa Recipe

We don’t have the overload of sumptuous tomatoes in Paris that folks have elsewhere, like when I was in Agen last year, and the markets were full of them, or in San Francisco or New York, where market tables are heaped with them in all colors, shapes, and sizes. So I’m over the moon when I find good tomatoes and use them carefully because they’re so precious.

I’m not usually a fan of hot tomato soup, but last year I was in New York City, and a restaurant served little cups of it with grilled cheese sandwiches, and I was hooked. Jeez, what have I been missing out on for the past fifty-four years?
Still, I didn’t serve this with grilled cheese sandwiches because I was with a friend’s French mother, and the idea of eating soup with a sandwich – well, it’s just not done. At a meal, you eat soup first, then a sandwich. But she was astonished that I ate – get this – soup along with bread and cheese, at the same time, for lunch or dinner. I never realized what a maverick I was. Or, more likely, how uncomfortable I was all these years.

This recipe is from The Bonne Femme Cookbook by Wini Moranville. When he saw it, Romain told me that a “bonne” femme means a woman who is “easy.” I don’t think what the author had in mind when writing the book, but this recipe was easy to make and an ideal way to coax flavor out of tomatoes.

I used fresh savory, a lesser-known herb, because I found a friendly bunch of it on a visit to the countryside. Its smell is reminiscent of fresh thyme, but it’s less aggressive and a bit rounder in flavor. Plus, I like saying the name.
No one has accused me of being “easy” (so I guess I’m not a born home); I gave it a decidedly non-French touch with a heap of corn salsa in the middle. I envisioned a relish-like condiment that was slightly pickled to conserve the flavor and texture of the fresh corn without cooking it to a fare-thee-well. And I wanted it to mingle nicely with the soup. I wasn’t sure if it would go well. But in the end, it was just fine.

Roasted Tomato Soup with Corn Salsa Recipe

It’s always hard to tell people how many chopped chiles to add because each one, and variety, is seemingly different. So I overdid the chiles, using Moroccan chiles here in Paris, ranging from mild to spicy, depending on each pepper. Fortunately, I didn’t get in trouble for spicing things up around here. But I was careful not to serve the soup with any cheese. That said, if you want to do it with some crumbled queso fresco or a bit of crème fraîche, well, I won’t tell.

Roasted Tomato Soup Recipe

Adapted from The Bonne Femme Cookbook by Wini Moranville, This soup, while intended to be served warm, tasted delicious cold as well. Winnie recommends using low-sodium chicken stock to enrich the soup, but I used water, which was just fine. If you have a lot of tomatoes on hand, I would recommend making a big pot of this soup and freezing it for a few months. I didn’t remove the skins, but you can slip them off quickly after they’re roasted if you want. But they blitzed away to nothing in the blender.

Roasted Tomato Soup with Corn Salsa Recipe

I used chipotle chili powder for the salsa because I like the smokiness. You’ll have some leftover salsa, making an excellent dip for tortilla chips. This soup serves four, although there won’t be enough for seconds. It can easily be doubled, tripled, or quadrupled.

For the soup

1. 2 pounds (900g) of tomatoes
2. Six cloves of garlic, peeled
3. Two tablespoons of olive oil
4. salt and freshly ground black pepper
5. 2 cups (500ml) water or low-sodium chicken stock
6. One teaspoon minced fresh thyme or savory
7. One tablespoon sugar

For the salsa

1. 2 cups (300g) of fresh or frozen corn kernels
2. One tablespoon of olive oil
3. One small tomato, diced
4. One small red onion, diced
5. 1/2 bell pepper, diced
6. One small fresh chile, seeded and chopped
7. 1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley or cilantro
8. generous pinch of ancho or chipotle chili powder
9. juice of 1 to 2 limes
10. salt
11. Preheat the oven to 400ºF (200ºC)

Roasted Tomato Soup

1. Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally and squeeze out the seeds. Toss the tomatoes with olive oil and garlic on a baking sheet, seasoning them with salt and pepper. Turn the tomatoes so they are all cut side down, and bake for 20 to 30 minutes until the tomatoes are completely soft and beginning to char on the bottoms.
2. Warm the water or stock in a saucepan with the roasted tomatoes, garlic (and any juices on the pan), and thyme or savory. Once warm, simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature, then blend the tomatoes with the water or stock and the sugar. (At this point, you can chill the tomato soup for up to 2 days.)
3. Make the corn salsa by warming the corn kernels in a skillet with olive oil until slightly soft, about 2 minutes. (If you have a grill, you can char them there instead.) Scrape the kernels into a bowl and mix in the diced tomatoes, onions, and peppers, as well as the chopped Chile, parsley, chili powder, the juice of 1 lime, and some salt. Stir together and taste, adding additional lime juice and salt if desired.
4. Warm the soup in a saucepan and divide it into a bowl, adding a generous heap of corn salsa in the center. Note that you want to warm the soup pretty well so that the rise of salsa doesn’t cool it down.

Tomato Soup with Corn Salsa

If you like this recipe, then I would suggest that you should try this recipe too: Salzburger Nockerl Recipe

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