Spicy Tomato Soup with Spinach and Herb Dumplings

Well Mother Nature sure is confusing my senses at the moment. How is it that in the first month of spring I am again making piping hot soups to warm my family? Whatever the reason, I will embrace it as should you because this is a truly delicious recipe. This recipe is for two so just double or triple as required.

Ingredients:

Soup:

8 large tomatoes

½ knob of garlic

½ bunch of sage

Pinch of salt

Drizzle of olive oil

1 hot chilli

1 onion finely diced

Dumplings:

6 leaves of silver beat

½ bunch of mint

½ bunch of continental parsley

1 egg

Flour for dusting

Basil and olive oil to serve

Method:

Soup:

The soup is incredibly easy first you pop the tomatoes, chilli and garlic cloves with the bases cut off) into a baking dish and drizzle olive oil over them. Bake them in a preheated oven for about ½ hour to 45 minutes or until the skins of the tomatoes are splitting and slightly scorched, do this ahead of time and enjoy the aromas that fill you home. When the tomatoes are ready take them out of the oven and allow them to cool, once they have cooled peel the majority of the skin off of the tomatoes and squeeze the garlic out of its skin (discard all the unwanted skins). Once your tomatoes and garlic are peeled and ready to go, finely dice your onion and roughly chop the sage heat a heavy base large saucepan and sauté the onion and sage until onion becomes translucent. Once the onion is pour in the contents of your baking tray and start squashing down your tomatoes. Use about one cup of water to wash out the baking tray and pour the liquid into the soup mix. Let the mix cook for about 10-15 minutes on a low heat with the lid on. Once everything has reduced down give the soup a rough blitz with the stick blender (don’t make it too smooth though).

Dumplings:

These dumplings are really quite simple but they take quite a bit of explaining. Just wash and destalk and roughly chop all of your herbs and silver beat. I have a metal colander I use for the next step but any strainer should work. Put all of your washed spinach and herbs into the colander and boil your kettle. Pour the boiling water over the herbs and watch them wilt down, keep pouring until you have used all of the water in the kettle then rinse the herbs with cold water from the tap. Now all you need to do is separate them ix into about 6 portions, squeeze each potion out in your hand forcing the entire liquid out and forming a little ball of spinach and herbs, do this for all of the portions. Crack the egg into a bowl and give it a quick whisk with a fork then pour some flour into another clean bowl. Dip each spinach and herb ball into the egg first then into the bowl of flour making sure the entire ball is covered with both egg and flour. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and gently lower each dumpling into the boiling water and cook for about 1 ½ minutes, making sure that the dumpling have all risen to the top of the pot before you take them out. Pop your dumpling onto a baking tray and coat them with olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt. Pop them into the oven until they start to brown slightly then they are ready.

Serve the soup with a few dumplings each, some fresh leaves of basil and a drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle of sea salt. Enjoy