Simple tomato soup - pappa al pomodoro

An end-of-summer tomato favourite.

One of my oldest friends moved to Berlin at the end of June and lived with us on and off for a few months until her own apartment became available. On Monday she moved out. It felt a little empty, even if there are some nice aspects to having the place to ourselves, too. I invited her over for dinner today, so she wouldn't have to eat alone too much.

The day-old chunk of bakery bread reminded me of the perfect way to make use of stale bread, specially this time of the year when tomatoes are dark red, juicy and cheap. Pappa al pomodoro!

All three of us agreed that this casserole was fantastic and I even tried to convince A that we should eat nothing else all next week...

Pappa al pomodoro 

(2-3 portions)
50ml organic, high quality olive oil
1 organic onion
2-3 organic garlic cloves
750g-1kg ripe, soft tomatoes
1 tbsp fair trade sugar (or more, depending on how ripe the tomatoes are)
1 tbsp sea salt
Ground organic black pepper
approx. 150-200g dried or day-old white or whole grain bread
Fresh basil leaves

Chop onions and crush the garlic cloves, cube the tomatoes. Heat up the oil on medium heat in a big pot, and fry the onions and garlic until translucent in half of the amount of olive oil, add the tomatoes (and their juices!) and more olive oil and let boil at a low temperature for about 10 minutes.

Remove the pot from the hot plate, add salt, pepper and sugar to taste. Throw in the bread cubes and let the casserole sit for about 15 minutes so that the bread softens and dissolves properly. Mix in the shredded basil and garnish with grated parmigiano reggiano cheese.


Recipe comes from the former Finnish food blog Voisilmäpeliä.