Tomato and Bread Soup

This week I had planned to post a few recipes to celebrate the beginning of autumn. But then the Australian "autumn" blew up like a 35 degree hair dryer in the face. It was stinking hot and didn't feel very much like autumn. Then, work also blew up and suddenly, I was busy cycling all over Melbourne for work and it was stinking. Not a good formula for a series of lovingly constructed, autumnal meals.

Today though! It's rainy and cool, so I threw together this soup, which could have fitted in nicely with my abandoned brief. It's so delicious and just the thing for the upcoming cooler days, particularly if you've got late season tomatoes and stale bread lying around. Adapted from a fantastic recipe in the new Yotam Ottolenghi book, it's mildly spicy and thickened with a slice of sourdough bread.  It doesn't sound like much, but turns out one slice of bread is enough to melt unrecognisably into the tomatoes and give you a soup you can almost stand your spoon up in. Kind of like pappa al pomodoro gone smoky with cumin. As a bonus, it comes together really quickly. Quickly enough for a weeknight dinner and quickly enough for me to put together before I jump on a train bound for the country for the Easter long weekend. Happy, happy Easter everyone!

PS: Super late, to the party I'm instagramming!

Tomato and bread soup

Adapted from a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe. Note on the recipe! I didn't have any stock on hand so I used the skins off the onions, garlic, green bits off the spring onion and some fresh herbs to boil up a mini stock. It worked fine.

3 tablespoons of olive oil
3 spring onions
1 onion
1 tsp of chilli flakes
1 tsp of ground cumin
2 chopped garlic cloves
Salt and pepper,
6 medium tomatoes
1 can of tomatoes(I love Mutti brand, if you can find them anywhere, get them! No one paid me to write that, no one has ever paid me to write anything or offered to come to think of it, so you can feel safe in my endorsement.)
500ml of stock(see note above)
One slice of bread

Saute the onions in the olive oil for around 10 minutes. Add the cumin, chilli, garlic, salt and pepper. Stir as it cooks, for 2 minutes. Add both of the tomatoes and stock. Simmer for ten minutes, taste at this point, if your tomatoes are not ripe, you may want to add a bit of caster sugar. Then add the bread and simmer for ten more minutes. Check seasoning, pulse a few times with a blender and serve.