Quick, Easy and Delicious Home-made Tomato & Basil Soup, Topped with Crispy Fried Longaniza

Quick, delicious and healthy, how many more reasons to try this Home-made Tomato & Basil Soup, Topped with Crispy Fried Longaniza.

This is very quick to make and very tasty. It is healthy and bursting with flavour from the fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden, do you really need more convincing? Just try it and I know you will love it too.

So what is longaniza? It is a kind of sausage very similar to chorizo, the difference is that it longaniza is one long sausage whereas chorizo are smaller individual sausages. If you cannot get longaniza where you are just use chorizo.

A while back my hubby showed me a method for a Basic “Caldillo de Tomate” or a Light Tomato Broth that as soon as I tried it I knew I had to make a tomato soup that way as the flavour was so much richer, this soup employs that method. So without further ado here is the recipe for my scrummy home-made tomato and basil soup.

Ingredients:

Serves 2

6 large tomatoes (I used Roma), skin removed
1 medium white onion, cut 1/4 of it for blending and dice the rest for frying
6 whole cloves of garlic, leave the skin on 3
1 medium courgette/zucchini, diced
100g longaniza or chorizo
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp oregano1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp grated dark piloncillo or any other sugar
salt and black pepper to taste
handful of fresh basil leaves

How to make Tomato and Basil Soup Topped with Crispy Fried Longaniza.

1. Begin by removing the skins from the tomatoes – Click here for How to Skin Tomatoes Fast and Easy.

2. Once you have your skinless tomatoes, put two of them to one side and the rest in a blender along with 3 of the raw whole garlic cloves, the 1/4 of onion, a generous pinch of salt 1/2 teaspoon of the grated piloncillo (if you don’t have piloncillo you can use whatever sugar you have) and the basil leaves, leaving a few for the garnish. Don’t blend it yet.. you’ll see why in a moment.

3. Remove the outer “skin” from the longaniza, slice it down the middle and put it in a small frying pan along with the 3 skin-on cloves of garlic. Fry over medium-high heat, til the chorizo is brown and crispy. Break it up with a fork or knife so that you have what resembles “crumbs” or crunchy bacon bits. The garlic should have browned/blackened nicely by now. Once done remove from heat and put to one side.

4. Now take the skin off the garlic cloves and stick them in the blender with the tomatoes etc, now is the moment to blend it smooth.

5. Dice the two skin-less tomatoes you put to one side and the courgette or zucchini or whatever you call it and the remaining white onion.

6. Heat the 1/2-1 tbsp olive oil in a pan over a medium – high heat and fry the onion first one minute, then add the garlic and fry a further 2-4 mins until your kitchen smells heavenly and the onion and garlic is soft.

7. Add the diced, skin-less tomatoes and courgette/zucchini, the other 1/2 tsp of grated piloncillo, oregano, thyme and paprika. Season with salt and pepper and allow to cook for 5-8 mins on a medium heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and put to one side.

8. In a medium sized pot, heat 1 tbsp olive oil and pour in the blended tomato mixture and allow it to fry for 3-5 minutes or until the colour becomes darker.

9. Add the tomato and courgette mixture, cook a further 5-10 minutes on medium heat, covered.

10. Serve in soup bowls topped with more fresh chopped (or hand pulled apart) basil leaves, the crispy fried longaniza and a dollop of natural yoghurt if desired and a chunk of fresh bread.

Delicious, healthy and quick to make, spice it up by adding chilli peppers to make this Home-made Tomato & Basil Soup Topped with Crispy Fried Longaniza a real winter warmer.

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