We didn’t do too well with tomatoes this year. In my old apartment I had a pretty big garden and could plant twenty or so plants to guard against about a third of them not really producing too much fruit. Here there’s not much room for any of that. We were going to build a raised bed planter and started doing that, but found out that dirt is surprisingly expensive and got a couple large pots instead. So, I’ve got two tomato plants and a hankering for gazpacho. Not willing to use every tomato that we’ve grown in one bowl of soup.  I had to buy them.

Well, at least we’re bookended by farmers markets these days. Oops I missed the Thursday one, better wait until the Saturday one right next door. Or sometimes you miss both of them and you just go to the grocery store. Oh well.

I thought I’d try making a vegetable stock sous vide, tossing some olive oil with basil and olive oil with red pepper flakes and smoked paprika into the circulator, and doing the ideas in food cryo blanch trick to the tomatoes (There’s a seriouseats article too).  I cut up onion, celery and carrots browned them a bit, then put them in a bag with a few ice cubes (since things were hot and I didn’t want the water to boil out in the vacuum machine) and some savory. I put that in the water bath at 70C ish. Also put in the flavored oils.

The tomatoes went into the freezer in a bag, salted. I waited about an hour, took the tomatoes out and thawed them a little then back to the freezer. This is to create large ice splinters that pop the tomoato cells and let you get more of the tomato taste out. I didn’t do a side by side or anything to see if it’s worth it. It’s not really that much extra effort, I was waiting for the stock anyways.

After about three hours I pulled out the stock, strained it, thawed the tomatoes in the circulator water. Put both into the blender, strained, strained, added a dark piece of toast and some cream, blended then seasoned, blended again. I probably put some fish sauce in there too.

Bowl soup, drizzle oils, plop with greek yogurt. The oils made it rich, and varied the flavor bite to bite. The tomatoes tasted fresh and bright. Then the nearly burned bread and smoky paprika brought it all together. It was pretty great. Suggested pairing: spicy grilled cheese and vernors.