soup | The Oven Experiments

I wanted to write this post when I got back from my Italy trip but decided to wait because this dish is the perfect Ramadan dish. Pappa la pomodoro is a traditional Tuscan bread and tomato soup.

The first time I saw it was on a food TV show a couple of years ago and I was intrigued. I took my copy of The Silver Spoon and searched for the recipe but I didn’t quite like the method. I kind of remembered how they made it on the show so I picked and chose what ingredients and method of cooking I was more comfortable with and created this recipe.

I have made this dish numerous times and every time it’s a little bit different because I never follow a recipe so it was always a couple of this , a pinch of this, a handful of this but yesterday I measured everything to have a recipe people can actually follow!

Of course when I was in Florence, I had this wonderful soup so let’s make a comparison.

Florence's pappa la pomdoro

Budour's pappa la pomodoro

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Ever since I was a little girl, French onion soup has been a favorite. So when I fell upon the treasure of a cookbook (my mother’s 70’s edition of the Betty Crocker’s Cookbook) when still young and learning to cook, naturally the first soup that I would attempt was the French onion soup. Simple and basic, it’s easy to make and tastes great. Of course, as I learned more about cuisine, I began to add French herbs, some wine (de-alcoholised in our case) and proper gruyere cheese. This weekend, I made it for my visiting sisters that have been craving it for a while. But this time, I added a new ingredient that I learned of from Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking. The addition of egg yolks gave the soup a new dimension and a subtle creaminess that we loved. Thank you Elizabeth! And now for the soup: