Anna Jones' Tomato, Miso & Sesame Soup
I interviewed Anna Jones (author of A Modern Way to Cook and A Modern Way to Eat) about a month ago for The Pool, and since then I have made a few things from her most recent book because I just really love it. It's not often that a cookery book resonates so strongly with me, as I really prefer to just do my own thing, but this book has some recipes that I just can't resist trying. I've posted about making the Sticky Green Bean and Paneer Curry previously, and this time I just have to share this great soup.
I had a glut of beautiful tomatoes from a Riverford veg box that I had to use before going on holiday. If you don't know about Riverford, they are real leaders in the organic sphere and have been growing exceptional organic produce for decades. Now they have a great scheme where you can order lovely healthy local organic food online and have it delivered straight to your door. It can be luck of the draw as to what you get due to seasonality etc, but that's kind of part of the fun. Anyway, I had piles and piles of tomatoes and desperately didn't want to waste them.
I set about making a standard tomato sauce for pasta, but flicking through A Modern Way to Cook, saw the recipe for Tomato, Miso and Sesame Soup. I had all the ingredients, so once the tomatoes had cooked down for a while I chucked them in my Nutribullet along with tahini, sesame, spring onion, miso paste and some lemon then let it get to work.
I've never thought about combining tahini and miso (am not v good with Japanese flavours), but it really was a revelation. Sweet, earthy and still deeply savoury from the miso, I ate a bowl of it standing up and froze the rest for the harsh tomato-less winter ahead.
Anna tops the soup with a kind of herby smash of coriander, miso, lemon juice, honey and more tahini, which elevates it to another level so try not to miss this step out.
The whole thing takes practically no time at all and you can literally feel the nutrients getting to work. One for the scrapbook.