Chilled Red Tomatoes

 

About as far from Fried Green Tomatoes as you can get… while still using tomatoes.

Recently a neighbor of ours who has a large garden plot has started selling fresh produce out of his front yard a couple days a week.  He has cucumbers, peppers, onions, but mostly, he has lots of fresh tomatoes.  They aren’t grocery store pretty, but they are super tasty.  How can you resist buying a whole bag of tomatoes like that?  Trick is… using that many tomatoes.  Here is a a tasty, chilled tomato soup we made!

Now, chilled soups aren’t something we’ve had often, but during the summer… well, lets just say it sounds better than hot soup!

The first step is to core and halve about half of the tomatoes (try saying halve about half several times fast).  Coring just means you take a knife and carve out the stem bit at the top.

 

Along with some unpeeled cloves of garlic and sliced shallot, it all gets roasted for about 15 minutes.  Look at how red those ‘maters are on the inside. 

I forgot to spray the foil with the non-stick cooking spray and as a result the shallots got… a bit too crispy.  Take the shallot and onion off of the pan and continue cooking the tomatoes another 15 minutes.

The other, uncooked half of the tomatoes get sliced up and put into the blender along with some tomato paste, salt, roasted garlic, shallot, and smoked paprika.   Once the cooked tomatoes are done, they go in there too. 

This dish is as easy as making margaritas!  While the whole messing is getting pureed, you drizzle about 3/8 cup of olive oil in.  As it turns out, our blender was barely big enough to accommodate this much soup!

Then you strain out whatever solids remain, stir in some fancy sherry vinegar, and chill! 

Yo.  Seriously.  Chill.

After at least two hours of chilling, serve in cold bowls with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and freshly cracked pepper.  The result is cool, bright, and velvety!