The Vegetable-Led Plate · Soup
Tomato Water Consommé
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 2 kg very ripe tomatoes, the softest you can find
- 20 g fine salt
- 8 g kombu
- 1 basil sprig, bruised
- 10 ml sherry vinegar
- 150 g cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, diced
- 20 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 8 basil leaves
The skills inside
The words inside
Cherry TomatoConsommé & Clarification
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Core and roughly chop the tomatoes, blitz with the salt in short pulses to a coarse, still-lumpy purée; a smooth blend makes a fine suspension that will drive pulp through the cloth.
- Stir in the kombu and basil sprig, cover and leave at room temperature 30 minutes for the salt to draw the water out. 30 min
- Line a sieve with a doubled muslin, set it over a deep bowl, tip in the purée and refrigerate 8 to 12 hours, letting it drip; never squeeze or twist the cloth. 600 min
- Discard the pulp and taste the liquid, which will be pale gold: correct with the vinegar and more salt until it tastes distinctly seasoned, well past where you would stop with a soup that had body.
- Serve cold at 8C, or warmed to no more than 60C (140F), poured at the table over cherry tomatoes, cucumber, torn basil and a thread of olive oil.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chianti Classico or Barbera d’Alba
- Also Right
- Vermentino for the lighter plates
- From the Taps
- Italian pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- San Pellegrino Sanbittèr
Tomato’s acid demands equal acid: Italian reds evolved beside the sauce, and the regional pairing is the safest law in wine.
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