Perfect warming soup on a cold winter day or a light soup for the summer! Bottle gourd and tomato soup.
Ingredients
Serves – 4 to 5
- Bottle gourd lauki, ghiya) – half of one big (or ½ kg)
- Tomatoes – 3 to 4 medium
- Ginger – ½ inch , peeled
- Whole black peppercorns - 6
- Onion – 1 medium
- Fresh coriander (cilantro) – 2 tbsp – to grind or chopped
- Butter – 1 to 2 tbsp
- Sugar – 1/2 to 1 tsp
- Tomato ketchup – 1 to 2 tbsp – optional
- Salt and crushed black pepper – to taste
To serve,
Garlic toast, cheese toast, bread sticks
Method
- Wash, peel and dice lauki. Roughly chop tomatoes, onion.
- In a pressure cooker put bottle gourd, tomato, onion, ginger, whole peppercorns, 4 cups water. Cook up to 1 whistle and then lower flame and cook another 5 mins or till cooked. Remove from heat. Let pressure drop, then open lid.
- Cool the cooked mixture. Then blend to puree in mixer/blender. When blending you may add the coriander leaves if desired.
- Strain blended mixture. Pour puree into saucepan. Bring to boil. Add butter salt, pepper powder, sugar, ketchup if adding. Add chopped coriander if not added when grinding.
- Stir and simmer for few minutes.
Serve hot.
Notes
1. Bottle gourd does not need to much time to be cooked. You may even cook the vegetables in a saucepan till cooked instead of a pressure cooker.
2. The soup tastes good even on its own without any accompaniments. You may even serve the soup alongside a simple pulao for a complete meal.
3. Vegans can skip butter.
4. Instead of regular white sugar, try adding some Demerara sugar for a more intense flavor.
Posted by Prathima Rao
Food
