Our second round of tomatoes for this year. This time is the cherry tomatoes.
We have two species of tomatoes in our garden. One species produces medium-sized round tomatoes; we started picking them a couple of weeks ago. These tomatoes are from the young plants from Jardiland, our local garden store. The second species is actually the cherry tomatoes which were left over by the previous owner.
It seems that the recent weather in France may be the main cause of the tomatoes bursting when they are ripe. The big shifts in temperature—heatwaves alternating with storms—in the past three months may have resulted in the interior of the tomatoes developing much faster than their skin, and thus splitting the skin.
Most of these cherry tomatoes were half ripe, greenish-orangish in colour just last week, before we left for our one-week holiday in Chamonix. After seven days, most of them had turned bright red. Some of them were so ripe that they had burst and quite a few had fallen to the ground. What a waste of good food!
There is no way we can finish all these ripe tomatoes in a few days, or even in a week if we are to eat them like we normally do, as a side dish. But if we do not pick them now, they will all burst, fall to the ground and rot. If not, some worms will have a tomato feast at my expense.
The best way to put these ripen ones immediately into good use is to make a soup! A soup will be able to use up all these tomatoes at one go. So, with a little basket in hand, I picked all the ripen tomatoes, those that could not wait any longer. Those that I thought would burst and fall to the ground at any time. A bounty of 700g of homegrown tomatoes of collected in no time.
Randomly selecting a recipe from the Internet, I made tomato soup for the first time in my life. It was a simple recipe with most of the ingredients (other than the fresh cream) that I already had at home. Like always, I did not strictly follow the recipe. For instance, I added a leftover potato (not part of the recipe) to the soup, and also, I was quite generous with the cream. The soup turned out much better than we expected—creamy, sweet with a tinge of sourness.
The next meal of tomato soup will be coming very soon as I expect more tomatoes to be ripening in a few days’ time!
