W
How did this notion of ‘tomato tea’ come up in the first place? Yesterday, I received a text message from a Vietnamese friend, Annie Ha. She had been to the Vegetable Markets with her husband and had bought a whole bag of tomatoes for me. So, how better to use them up than for soup?
Years ago, I went to the Berowra Waters Inn in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park outside Sydney for lunch with some overseas visitors Eddy and Isma. We were presented with an intensely-flavourful, but delicate demitasse of ‘tomato tea’ as we stepped from the seaplane on to the jetty – half a cup, and a fine porcelain cup, without a saucer. I was thinking it was a bit odd at the time but a novel difference to the usual glass of bubbly. It was simply delicious, and obviously memorable.
Y
(rumoured to have Gestapo amongst her clientele), during the Second World War; and that he continues to operate). He knew of ‘tomato tea’ and gave me the priceless, if complicated, recipe. Beef mince and bacon is part of it. After simmering, the broth is then strained through muslin to remove all traces of solid matter. (I think I also had to whip egg white and stir that through it to catch any remaining traces of solid matter, before straining again). Work!
he result was a clear, delicate, flavourful ‘tea’ with barely a hue of pink, but an intense sense of tomato. It was hard to convince guests that half a cup was all they were getting!T
Y
Checking my Dropbox documents, I was not successful in locating the ‘tomato tea’ recipe, but I did come across another tomato soup recipe, which takes me back to a wonderful trip I did with Alan Guignon to India in 2004. Our travels took us to the Ranthambore National Park to hunt tigers – now ten years ago. While there, we had a ‘Tomato and Coriander’ soup, Indian-style, at the Aman-I-Khas tented camp. I was so impressed with this soup at the time, the General Manager took me down to the vegetable garden himself to see the tomatoes growing. Later, he set up a personal cooking demonstration with the chef in the camp kitchen to take me through the process, right from chopping the tomatoes. (I can’t remember if I had to put them in hot water to peel them first, but I do remember his using lots of ghee, and I was aghast.)
I leave it to you to gather how much I enjoyed the Tomato and Coriander soup – Indian-style.
Recipe for the ‘Tomato and Coriander’ soup
We use tomato tea to relieve cold symptoms. Mix and heat following ingredients in a pan or in the microwave. V8 Juice or tomato juice, 2-3 cloves Garlic crushed (use more if you can) 2 T Lemon Juice Hot Sauce (the more the better, so as much as you can handle)
Mix and heat in a pan or in the microwave.
Zulfi
Zulfi – thank you and I’ll bear in mind as a good natural remedy. Certainly not as difficult to prepare or as ‘delicate’ to the palate as the labourious ‘tomato tea’ that I was looking for.
Fab story as always M! If you have any left over tomato tea, add a bit of sea salt and gelatin to make tomato tea jelly. Make them a little bit more bouncy (but still tender). Let them set and then dice them very finely. Pile them on a tea spoon – they will look wonderful when the light passes through them, like translucent ruby caviar. Use them as garnish on a salmon or ocean trout confit (cooked sous vide 60C for 12 minutes or in the oven tetsuya style but same temp at 14 mins). It’s even better of the confit is cool – great appetizer !
My word, that tented camp is a campy tent?!
S
S – Surely you’ve experienced a tented camp in all of your travels?
Look forward to my soft-shell crab (and seeing you both too) at Hutong in Hkg next week.
M
Mick I have a recipe for tomato water which is perfectly clear like a consommé. It requires a jelly bag of muslin suspended over a bowl and the cooked tomato mixture dripping through……..it cannot be touched to force thru as this would make it cloudy. Quite a performance!! I’d just make plain old tomato soup.
Laborious for sure. Yours probably does the trick – particularly if all you get to savour is half a cup!
M