My Grandma’s Applause-Worthy Tomato-Coconut Soup Is Prepared in Simply 15 Minutes

One in every of my favourite meals to eat is the comforting tomato-coconut soup that my grandmother used to prepare dinner for me at any time when I visited her in Maharashtra at her house on India’s west coast. It is generally known as saar all through India, which implies “soup” in Marathi. However my grandma at all times referred to it as “santosh,” which in Sanskrit means “contentment.” I’ve at all times thought this title was properly suited: The creamy coconut milk paired with candy–tart tomatoes and ghee creates a velvety soup that makes me very content material certainly. 

As an expert chef, I’ve cooked my grandmother’s tomato-coconut soup many instances over time. The primary time was again in 2007 for my first catering gig at my ex-husband’s boss’s Christmas get together, the place I served it as the primary course of the dinner. It was so properly acquired that everybody clapped as we toasted my grandmother, who was 8,700 miles away in India. 

Just a few years after that, I put the soup on the menu of my first pop-up restaurant. One visitor loved it a lot that a number of months later, she known as me to cater her household Christmas dinner and requested for my grandmother’s soup. I cooked her household’s Christmas dinner for years after, and yearly they requested this tomato-coconut soup on the menu. 

Streamlining My Grandmother’s Tomato-Coconut Soup Recipe

Cooking the recipe the best way my grandmother did—boiling, peeling, and seeding recent tomatoes and making recent coconut milk from scratch—was not sensible for catering massive scale events in my California kitchen. So over time I’ve made changes to her recipe, specifically calling for canned tomatoes and coconut milk instead of recent, to create this straightforward, one-pot recipe I’m sharing beneath. 

With these two modifications, the soup just isn’t solely simpler to make, however it may be made any time of 12 months, even when recent tomatoes aren’t in season. Having used many manufacturers of canned tomatoes on this soup over time, I imagine that actual Italian San Marzano tomatoes work finest, because of their constant sweetness and taste (beware that not all canned tomatoes with the phrases “San Marzano” on the label are literally the true ones from Italy). Simply keep in mind to take away any basil leaves from the can earlier than utilizing the tomatoes. 

As for the kind of coconut milk, I’ve experimented with full-fat and low-fat coconut lotions and milks, and I discover full-fat coconut milk has the most effective taste and viscosity for this dish; coconut cream is simply too wealthy and low-fat milk is simply too skinny. 

One other distinction between my grandmother’s model of the soup and mine is the kind of onion used. My grandmother at all times used Indian onions, that are smaller and sweeter than American white, pink, and yellow onions. The most effective alternative is shallots. They’re about the identical dimension and have comparable allium taste to the onions my grandmother would use when making this soup in India.

As soon as the shallots are softened, chile powder is added with the blended-and-strained tomato combination, adopted by the coconut milk. When including the coconut milk, watch out to not carry the soup to a boil. This eliminates any threat of the fats within the coconut milk separating and swimming pools of coconut oil forming on the floor.

The ultimate santosh doesn’t style like an ordinary American tomato soup. It’s gentle and silky with a balanced taste that’s enhanced with delicate warmth from the ginger, shallots and chile powder. In Maharashtra, the soup is commonly eaten blended into white rice or with bits of chapati or different griddle bread dipped into it, and in my view it’s certain to carry contentment in each chunk.

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