09/18/2024
When you can buy a lot of leeks for a great price, like I did the other day (6 big ones for $2.88!!) this Roasted Vegetable Soup is a great way to use a lot of them. I've been making this soup for well over a decade after seeing it made on a very basic cooking show. It takes a lot of tomatoes and a lot of leeks so it's expensive to make unless both are on sale for a great price.
Leeks grow in fine sand so you need to wash them carefully. Trim greens and roots and slice the leek in half lengthwise. Run both cut ends under the faucet splaying the layers out to rinse out the rest of the sand.
I forgot to take photos before I blended the roasted tomatoes, leeks, carrots and garlic with some quality vegetable stock (the one sold in a jar). The final picture shows 4-5 litres of finished soup with 3-4 tablespoons of red wine vinegar on top to stir through. This is a zesty, fresh-tasting tomato soup that everybody loves. It's even good cold, right KB?
To make:
Toss the prepped veg (4 lbs toms, 4 large leeks, 4 carrots, 3 heads of garlic) with 1/2 colive oil, 1 tbs salt and 2 tsp black pepper and roast in a shallow pan at 375 F with the tomatoes arranged skin-side up. It takes about an hour for the skins to get crispy and the tomatoes to cook and you need to stir the leeks and carrots a bit so they don't brown too much.
Squeeze garlic out of husks and blend roasted veg in batches with some vegetable stock (eg, 1.5-2 cups of stock to make a litre in the blender). Keep tomato skins if you have a super blender, otherwise remove them. Combine all batches in a big container, taste and adjust the S&P. Finish this soup with a splash of red wine vinegar (eg., 2 tsp per litre of finished soup) and stir through.
Stir well before serving because it settles a bit. You can freeze it, no problem.
Enjoy those cheap leeks and tomatoes!
