I am a big fan of home made food. Simple, cheap, rich in flavours, relatively healthy – that is my motto.

I went into a supermarket today evening and I noticed that there was a basil in promo – price reduced to 30p for a live plant, only because it reached its Display Until date. When left my home I did not think about the soup, but the moment I found the Basil, I started to think about the tomatoes and other ingredients which I need to make one. Usually I buy fresh tomatoes (I look for discounts like for the basil), but today there was none, so I decided to try something new – I went into the shelves with pasta and sauces and I found something called “Passata”. I never tried it before, but it is basically bottle of blended tomatoes (this is what I would do with whole tomatoes anyways). I bought 2x 680ml bottles for £1.25 each (organic, in glass bottles). I also got other ingredients: 1x red pepper (43p), 500g carrots (reduced to 70p), baguette (reduced to 40p). I don’t mind buying food at the reduced price if I know I will use it the same or next day, especially fruits and veggies.

This is the full recipe:

Passata 680g x2 (or 1.5 blended fresh tomatoes)
Fresh basil
2 cloves of garlic
2 carrots
1 red pepper
1 table spoon of dried dill
1 tea spoon of chipotle chilli flakes
1 tea spoon of honey
1 table spoon of balsamic vinegar of modena
1 table spoon of red wine vinegar
Salt (to your own taste)
300g-ish of raw pork ribbs (meat is not necessary)
Few slices of baguette to company the soup

I used 3.5l cooking pot.

First I cooked the meat. Once ready, I drained the water and poured passata into the pot. Next I blended garlic, carrots and pepper and added them to the pot. I was aiming for a creamy soup. All other ingredients were added next. I didn’t have a olive oil (1 tbl spoon), and forgot to blend 1 onion, but this is optional. I covered the pot with the lid and cooked the soup for about 20 minutes. It is important to cook meat separately in water because the soup is acidic and it would take many hours to cook it well, and this will negatively impact taste of other ingredients when they would be overcooked. Also I wanted to avoid any foam in my soup which is created while raw meat is cooking.

Once the soup was cooked I poured some into a bowl and eat with sliced baguette.

As you can see on the picture below, there is quite significant residue at the sides of the pot (after eating two bowls of the soup!) – this is pulp from tomatoes. Some people may not like the look of it, but to me it means that the soup was made from real ingredients, not just water and broth cubes or flavour enhancing powders.

I highly recommend anyone to try this recipe, or even to make it with your own twist 🙂 Most of the listed ingredients are optional (like vinegar or honey) and can be replaced with whatever you have in your shelves. Be creative!