I also cut up a cucumber (I peeled it and took out the seeds first).
And a bunch of tiny red onions. Like a quarter of a big red onion.
Skinning tomatoes reminds me of the late summer sauces that fill my freezer. I have this great elderly neighbor who brings me the ugliest tomatoes you can imagine from his garden. I face the heat and stand over a hot stove and make up enough sauce to last through the fall, and then spend my winter staring at cans and doing my best. So first, I get some water boiling, and have an ice bath on hand, and I make an X in the skin of each tomato with a knife.
All of that was added to the cucumbers and onion, with some additional flavors. Salt and pepper, cumin, balsamic vinegar and vegan worcestershire (I owe the addition of the worcestershire to Alton Brown - you can certainly get by without it, but it adds depth).
And a jalepeno. Note that since we've had a few incidents with peppers, the jalepeno is cut on a separate cutting board. Better safe than sorry. I pretend it's raw chicken.
It needs liquid, you know, to be soup. I use vegetable juice. I think it has more to it than tomato and for whatever reason, even in glass bottles, I think tomato juice tastes like metal. Maybe I've had too many cans of it on airplanes? So I added some veggie juice, enough to make it soup. Like a cup and a half.
I added a tablespoon of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon. I put a bowl cover on it and let it be in the fridge.
You can blend it now or blend it later, but either way, it needs to sit a bit. I made this mostly in the morning, before work, and then came home and tended to it for a bit (added the jalepeno, blended it) left for two hours and then ate it. I think 12 hours would be perfect, but an hour would be fine.
Either scoop out about half of it and throw it in your blender on puree or smoothie or whatever, or use an immersion blender and hold back. I really wanted half of it to be liquid and half of it to be chunky.
Then I just stirred it for a bit to get the chunky parts integrated.
I sliced up some avocado and topped it with that and cilantro.
And served it with grilled cheese on the funny t-shirt shaped bread I made a few weeks ago.
This made four meals worth. It was super bright, crisp, and refreshing.
This recipe is cross-posted at Saturday’s Mouse, where I’m working on making food out of food.
Ingredients
- 10 plum tomatoes
- 1 jalepeno, diced
- 1 cucumber, skinned, seeded and chopped
- 1.5 cups low sodium vegetable juice
- 1/4 large red onion, diced
- 1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
- 3 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- Prep time: 25 mins
- Cook time: 0 mins
- Total time: 1 hour 25 mins
- Yield: 4 servings