This recipe makes a delightful soup or pasta sauce.The addition of prawns makes a delicious meal of it. Cook the sauce now and freeze it for winter to get a hit of summer sweetness when you are all rugged up.

Check out the size of these locally grown tomatoes, the sweetest you can get. If your tomatoes aren’t sweet a teaspoon of sugar in your pot will fix them up.

Ingredients

1 1/2 kgs Peeled Tomatoes chopped or canned

I fennel bulb sliced

4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

small brown onion or whites of 4 shallots/scallions

10 saffron strands in 1/2 cup warm water

glass white wine

2 -3 Tablespoons Cream

Olive Oil

salt (chilli salt optional)

Method

1. Sweat onion, fennel and garlic in a little olive oil.

2. Add wine and simmer for 5mins.

3. Add Tomatoes, saffron water and salt. Simmer for 10-15 mins depending on how watery your tomatoes are. Wait till    sauce/soup thickens a little.

4. Remove from heat and ver carefully ladle into blender/food processor, wizz till smooth. Cream can be added now if serving as a tomato soup.

5. Or fry off 250g shelled raw prawns with a little more garlic, until they just change colour. Add tomato mixture and simmer for two minutes. Add cream and stir.

6. Serve as soup or over pasta. Garnish with the inner leaves of the fennel stalk.

Namaste Liz