Healthy Tomato Soup !

My daughter loves Soup, esp home-made Tomato Soup. My mom introduced it to her while she was a year and a half, and she caught up on this pretty well. Soups with croutons, soup with bread sticks, with garlic bread , with steamed veggie batons - anything goes in, as long as its soup, and more importantly if its Tomato Soup , almost like Henry Ford's declaration "any colour for a car is ok, as long as its black!" :-)

This soup is a permanent fixture in my weekend menu, which is more of continental and convenient food, yet healthy ! I try every method to make it more healthy and hearty, so I can see the smile on my kid's face as she literally slurps her way through :-)

So, presenting Healthy Tomato Soup. Its different from the normal commercial/other soups in that it contains a whole lot of veggies (yes, apart from the tomatoes), has no butter or commercial additive, including the dreaded MSG !

Update : Sending this to Sanyukta's Cooking with Whole Foods Event - Tomato originally started by Kiran (Kiran's Announcement Page)

Preparation time: 10 mins
Cooking time : 10 mins
Serves : 2 kids!

Ingredients:

• Bright red tomatoes - 4
• Carrots diced - 25 gms
• French beans diced - 50 gms
• Cauliflower - 50 gms
• Potato - 1 no (peeled and cubed)
• Capsicum chopped- 1/8 (optional)
• Ghee - 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
• Cumin Powder - 1/2 tsp
• Coriander Powder  - 1/4 tsp
• Salt to taste
• Milk /cream - 1/2 tsp

To serve with : French bread / Toast / Soup Sticks / croutons

Method:

1) Blanch the tomatoes
2) Boil all the vegetables in a colander till soft and retain the stock (You may pressure cook for two whistles too)
3) Blend the tomatoes and veggies with a cup of water (or stock) into a thick soup.
4) Strain ensuring only the tomato seeds are filtered out and you retain all the veg fibres.
5) In a deep bottomed pan, add ghee, fry capsicum, add the above veg puree, turmeric, masala powders and salt. Adjust water or stock as necessary.
6) Once it comes to a boil, take off the heat and add a dollop of cream or a tbsp of cold milk.
7) Serve with toasted bread / soup sticks !

Tips:
1) You may make the vegetable stock the previous day (from any vegetables) and use it to only puree this veggies.
2) Use left over soup as a base for pav bhaji / wet curry the next day :-) adjust seasoning accordingly.