bread and tomato soup (pappa al pomodoro)
starter | serves 4
This Tuscan soup is delicious – it's a soup everyone should try. Just thinking of it makes me salivate! It's a family-friendly soup – babies and grandparents (both without teeth!) can eat it with gusto. I've added roasted cherry tomatoes to my recipe but it also works really well just with tinned. The great thing is that it only takes 20 minutes to cook, so go for it! PS Use a stale white cottage-style loaf – not cheap sliced white factory bread.
Prick the cherry tomatoes and toss them with one sliced clove of garlic and a quarter of the basil leaves. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, put them in a roasting tray and cook in the oven at 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4 for about 20 minutes. The reason for doing this is so that their flavour becomes intense and concentrated.
Heat a glug of olive oil in a large pot and add the remaining garlic and the basil stalks. Stir around and gently fry for a minute until softened. Add your tinned tomatoes, then fill the tin with water and add that. Break the tomatoes up with a spoon, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes.
Tear the bread up into thumb-sized pieces and add them to the pan. Mix well and season to taste. Tear in the basil leaves and let the soup sit on a low heat for 10 minutes. By this time your roasted tomatoes will be done, with juice bursting out of their skins, so remove them from the tray, remembering to scrape all the lovely sticky bits from the bottom. Pour them into the soup with all the juices, basil and oil from the tray.
Give the soup a good stir – you're looking to achieve a thick, silky, porridgey texture, so feel free to adjust it with a little water. Then remove it from the heat and add 6 or 7 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Divide between your bowls and serve with a little extra basil torn over the top if you like. The most important thing with this soup is that you have a wonderfully intense sweet tomato basil flavour.

• from
Jamie's Italy
ingredients
• 500g ripe cherry tomatoes
• 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
• a large bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked, stalks finely chopped
• the best extra virgin olive oil you can find
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 x 400g tins of good-quality plum tomatoes
• 500g or 2 large handfuls of stale good-quality bread
I made a huge pot of this soup and will drop some off to a friend who is going through a stressful time. Nothing feels better than a bowl of great soup and some crusty bread.
Thanks.
To commentator No. 9: It's Staphylococcus aureus.
Jumaolster, its a good idea to add parmesan cheese to finish the "pappa pomodoro", and add cherry tomatoes, its a good idea too.
Have a nice year 2009!
Ufa!!!
Gostaria de fazer a sopa de tomate e pão, mas se alguém puder traduzir para a língua portuguesa a receita, ficarei grato
dump a garlic clove with olive oil and tomato sauce from a jar in a pan,
toast some bread, slice and quarter it and put into pan
add some basil or anything you like
after five minutes, sprinkle grated parmesan cheese over it all
ready!!!!