Chef de Cuisine Sebastien Zozaya of Pearls and Caviar at the Shangri-La Hotel Qaryat Al Beri provided this great starter to spice up your dinner.

He says, “this goes best with the first tomato of the season, lightly spiced with cumin. We love to experiment with different textures and temperatures and this dish offers both - the accompanying labneh stick brings freshness and the fava brings the crunch!”

Ingredients:

• 500g onions
• 20g thyme
• 150g fresh coriander
• Ten fresh large tomatoes
• 150g garlic
• One litre vegetable stock
• 20g cumin
• 50ml olive oil
• Salt and pepper, to taste

For the labneh breadstick:

• Four breadsticks
• 100g labneh
• 150g fava beans
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Method:

1. Peel the tomatoes and cut into four pieces, removing the seeds (although you can leave these in for more texture)
2. In a pan add olive oil, garlic, tomato, thyme and cumin and saute
3. Deglaze with vegetable stock and let it cook for 45 minutes to one hour
4. Afterwards, add coriander, blending it all and season with salt and pepper

Method for the breadsticks:

1. Cut the bread into long rectangles and toast them in the oven
2. Cook the fava beans in salted water for two minutes before cooling with ice water
3. Spread the labneh on the bread, then add the fava beans on top
4. Sprinkle beans with olive oil, salt and pepper

Check out our very own Tried and Tested review of this recipe below.

Now you may be wondering why we decided to make homemade tomato soup when (according to our official taste tester) there is a “perfect” canned variety available. However when Chef de Cuisine Sebastien Zozaya of Pearls and Caviar sent over this recipe we had to try it out. And after tasting this soup, we did manage to get an official retraction.

The most time consuming step of this recipe is peeling the skin off the tomatoes. To do this as quickly as possible, blanch the tomatoes in boiling water for two minutes before. The skins will come off very easily but do take note that the tomatoes will be quite slippery so be careful when chopping them up.

We decided to include the seeds along with the flesh of the tomatoes as that is one of the  most nutrient rich parts of the tomato. It really didn't make a difference to our end result since the seeds dissolved into the soup and we were healthier for it.

After sautéing the tomatoes, onions, garlic and seasoning we added two cubes of vegetable stock and around seven cups of boiling water. Then we let everything cook together for an hour before adding fresh coriander.

The soup was relatively easy to make, preparing the tomatoes was the only time consuming thing (if you don't count cooking time). The soup was delicious and we will definitely be penciling this into our recipe books.

The tomatoes are key to this recipe and we must say we spent ages searching for ripe tomatoes that were still affordable. Unfortunately some of our tomatoes didn't quite make the cut and we ended up with a light red version of tomato soup. To fix this, we added a box of crushed and strained tomatoes to help boost the tomato flavour and colour.

The breadstick was okay, a bit bland with the fava bean to be honest. The restaurant's version features edamame beans however we couldn't locate them at our local supermarket.

We give it four out of five spoons!