Cream of Bloody Mary soup

While my garden (read a cat toilet out the back of my flat and two window boxes) have been yielding not much in the vegetable stakes, it looks like everyone else has been experiencing something in the way of a vegetable glut with tomatoes being the gluttiest (yeah, it's not a word).

Consequently, my lovely gardeny friends have been donating a metric truckload of tomatoes to me. Here's what I did with them - a soup-booze crossover. Go on, you know you want to.

Ingredients

Oil

Four garlic cloves

One small onion

Three small shallots (not the banana type)

Two ribs of celery

150g of new potatoes

350g ripe tomatoes

Approx 250-300mls of vegetable stock

two bay leaves

One very heaped dessertspoons of tomato puree

Lemon juice

Vegan Worcestershire sauce (I'm using Life Free From brand)

Celery salt

Cider vinegar

Tobasco sauce

Shot of vodka (optional)

Two dessertspoons or thereabouts of soya cream or other vegan cream

How you do it

Finely chop the garlic and cook in oil over a medium heat for two minutes.

Chop the onions, shallots and celery as finely as you can be bothered and then add to the garlic, and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes, until they're translucent.

Chop the new potatoes into small chunks, and add to the pan. While the potato cooks, chop up the tomatoes (I'm using a mix of cherry and normal types) and then add to the pan.

Pour on the stock, add the bay leaves and tomato puree and simmer gently until the new potatoes are soft.

Using a stick blender, puree the soup.

Now you need to add the spices. Making a Bloody Mary is a kind of personal thing - everyone thinks they know how to make the best one. I wouldn't dream of coming between a person and their booze, so the following spice measures are my suggestions - you go ahead and modify them as much as you like.

So, here's what I added: One and a half dessertspoons of Worcestershire sauce, the juice of a quarter of a lemon, a teaspoon of cider vinegar, a scant teaspoon of celery salt, some black pepper and a good few shakes of tobasco sauce.

Now stir in your vodka and the soya cream (although you could leave both out if you're feeling like it), garnish with a bit more cream and some celery leaves and enjoy.