The Crankee Yankee and I have eight raised bed gardens at the front of our house. This year we had a super-bumper crop of roma and cherry tomatoes, green peppers and garlic along with the other produce. By the end of the summer, I had made tons of tomato sauce, froze dozens of tomatoes and of course we ate as many as we could. The rest we gave away.
But when the tomatoes stopped producing, we still had loads of green tomatoes. What to do with them all? I started looking up recipes for them; coming from a long line of frugal women, it went against my grain not to use them.
I tried a green tomato salsa, which turned out to be “meh.” That went into our compost heap. I made a green tomato pie with lots of cheese, and that was ok. And of course I froze some green tomatoes; I’d hate it if I found the best recipe in the world for green tomatoes and then didn’t have any.
But when in doubt, make soup. Believe it or not, those little green tomatoes are fabulous for soup; who knew? I found the following recipe for curried green tomato soup.
Check it out and try it; honestly, it’s one of the best soups I’ve ever had!
Curried Green Tomato Soup
Adapted from the Boston Cooking School Cook Book, 1948
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs minced onion
1 tsp curry powder
2 cups green tomatoes, chopped
Salt and pepper
Melt butter, add onion and cook slowly until soft. Add curry powder and tomatoes and cook until heated thoroughly. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Now here is where the recipe became mine…
*To the tomatoes I added:
5 cups or so of roasted peppers, mostly red but a couple small green, yellow and orange ones
2 cloves of roasted garlic, smashed
1 can of garbanzo beans
Cayenne pepper
Cumin
Coriander
I let this simmer a bit over medium-low heat, then added:
1 cup light coconut milk
More seasoning to taste
Using an immersion blender, I blended the soup until it was smooth but still had nice big pieces of pepper, tomatoes, and whole beans.
It turned out great! The green tomatoes added a nice amount of tartness and surprising crunch. I imagine if you cooked the soup longer than I did (about 15 minutes) the flavors will blend more and the tomatoes might become softer.
*The comments are not mine; but from the one who tinkered with this recipe to make it so delicious. I’m embarrassed not to have found her name; she deserves the credit!