Making a tomato soup

I love soups! Not just for health reasons, but it's also good for your appetite as you get ready for entree. This week I made a tomato soup. I brought some readymade packets earlier, but now that they all are finished it was my sincere duty to make one myself.

As usual, Kunal Kapoor's kitchen came to the rescue. The video was short, clear, and inclusive of all essential tips. It took me an hour to finish the recipe from start to finish.

Fortunately I had lot of garlic cloves which were central to making this delicious spicy soup, bunch of tomatoes (Although not quite red), cilantro, and croutons. Most of the time was spent frying all the spices, onions, and tomatoes until they were soft enough to be pureed.

One thing that I avoided mentioned in the video was directly taking the fried mixture and passing it through strainer. It would've caused a lot of wastage of veggies as mentioned in video's comments section. Instead I took the soft blend of tomatoes and spices and passed it through blender to make a puree. It still had a lot of unwanted pieces such as garlic cloves, tomato peels, and pieces that didn't quite go well in silky smooth soup.  Unlike last time when I used the finely blended mixture as is, I passed it through strainer to get the silky and smooth consistency of soup.

The result was restaurant style smooth soup with exact combination of spices, tomatoes, and garlic flavor. I didn't strain all the soup. Instead I also wanted some thick portion to eat with rice. So I used the unstrained portion with extra water to use it as a thick gravy. To make it more fancy, I also used some croutons which gave the feeling that I am in-fact having this soup in a restaurant.

Just straining the soup wasn't enough, but I also had to boil it a bit to thicken it a little bit more. Finally, I garnished it with croutons and coriander.