Do you guys love Italian food as much as I do? 🇮🇹

I don’t know what happened, but lately I’m SO into all things Italian! Example 1, 2 and 3.

For some reason, I’ve never really understood the Italian food crazy. I mean yeah, I like pizza and pasta, and even tiramisu, but ehm yeah, it’s not that special?! Well, I’ve totally changed my mind! Before starting this food blog, I was already into delicious food, and as a kid I used to bake a lot, but only when I started That Healthy Kitchen I started realizing the impact that good quality ingredients truly have on your food. I mean it when I say that a good quality ingredient can take a dish from okay to wow! And that, my friends, is exactly what Italian food is about: easy, simple recipes that become extraordinary by using high quality ingredients.

A good caprese salad is exactly the same. It is a dish that is so simple and easy, yet SO delicious! You only need a handful of good quality ingredients, slice up the buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes and drizzle with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar and add some leaves fresh, fragrant basil. It is actually so easy that it doesn’t even get to be called a “recipe” in my opinion 🙈

Therefore, this blogpost is not dedicated to a caprese salad but to a caprese soup, or Zuppa Caprese as the Italians would call it. A little more autumn proof, and a little more warming, but still as delicious as the original cold dish! For the soup, you’ll need all the ingredients you would normally use for a caprese salad, plus some garlic, sun dried tomatoes and (optional) some coconut palm sugar.

I prefer eating this soup lukewarm, but it is just as good when you serve it chilled or piping hot! If you’d like to make this soup vegan, I would highly recommend making this recipe for plant-based mozzarella by my friend Astrid. I’ve been meaning to try it for a while now, and when I do I’ll let you guys of course know how it turned out! The soup itself is vegan, so you don’t need to make any adjustments there.

Italian Zuppa Caprese
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 25 mins
Total time: 35 mins
Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients
1 kg ripe, sweet, good quality tomatoes
1/2 bulb garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 large sun-dried tomatoes
50 gram fresh basil, stems included
1 1/2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon coconut palm sugar (optional, taste whether you find it necessary)
1 bulb buffalo mozzarella, preferably organic, or make this plant-based mozzarella alternative
25 gram pine nuts, toasted
salt and freshly cracked black peper, to taste

Instructions
1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celcius.
2. Wash the tomatoes and put them as a whole in a large baking dish. Crush the garlic and add as well. Drizzle the tomatoes and garlic with 1 tablespoon olive oil and bake for about 25 minutes or until the tomatoes turned a bit orange and have burst. Let the tomatoes and garlic cool for about 5 minutes
3. Put the baked tomatoes, garlic, 3 tablespoons olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil and balsamic vinegar in a blender and blend. The soup is supposed to be quite thick, but if you feel like your blender has some problems blending it, you may want to add a few tablespoons water.
4. After blending, taste whether or not you want to add some sugar. You can do this to balance out the acidity of the tomatoes, but it is not always necessary, as it depends on the tomato variety you use and the ripeness.
5. Pour the soup in 4 bowls, top with 1/4 of the mozzarella and pine nuts and add some salt and pepper if desired. If you want to serve it hot, pour the soup in a pan after blending and warm over low heat. Do not let the soup boil, as the basil will lose quite some flavor when heated.

Nutritional information per serving, including mozzarella and pine nuts
336 kcals
24.7 gram fat
of which 5.8 gram saturated fat
20.2 gram carbohydrates
of which 4.9 gram fiber and 12.3 gram sugar
13.5 gram protein