Bread & Tomato Soup

Name: Bread & Tomato Soup
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 3 h
Total time: 3 h 30 min
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 1 onion, chopped; 125 ml/4 fl oz/½ cup olive oil; 1 handful of basil leaves, chopped, plus extra torn leaves, to serve; 1 handful of basil leaves, chopped, plus extra torn leaves, to serve; sea salt and freshly ground black pepper; sea salt and freshly ground black pepper; 1.25 kg/2 lb 12 oz very ripe, soft tomatoes, roughly chopped; 1.25 kg/2 lb 12 oz very ripe, soft tomatoes, roughly chopped; 3 garlic cloves, crushed; 400 g/14 oz stale bread, crusts removed and thinly sliced; 3 pinches of salt; 2 onions, halved; 3 carrots, scraped and quartered; 3 tomatoes, halved (optional); 3 celery sticks, quartered; 3 cabbage leaves, quartered; 2 courgettes, cut into large chunks; 12 lettuce leaves, halved; 1 small leek, rinsed, trimmed and halved

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy
Ready in
3 hr 30

Appears in

Fiori Di Zucca

By Valentina Harris

Published 2013

About

In times of hardship, my family has always been good at using their imagination (and any available ingredients) to make a meal full of flavour and nourishing to eat. In our house, this soup was revered as one of those dishes that kept morale buoyant in one of the hardest moments of my family’s history.

Ingredients

125 ml/4 fl oz/½ cup olive oil
1

Europe
Italy
Soup
Vegan

Method

First, make the broth. Put all the vegetables in a large saucepan or stockpot, add the salt and pour in 2l/70fl oz/8 cups water. Bring to the boil gently over a low heat, then cover and simmer for 1½ hours. Remove from the heat and leave to cool completely. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl or large jug and discard the vegetables. If not using immediately, chill the broth, covered, for up