We've had an unusually cool summer here (something for which I am very thankful); this meant that all the vegetables and other crops were behind in their growth cycles, and so harvest time came later than usual.

About a mile northeast from our house is a vegetable farm offering U-Pick i.e. you can pick your own vegetables from their fields, take it to their stall and have it weighed to pay by weight. No hothouse vegetables, no ripening in artificial conditions, just fresh, ripe vegetables on your plate that were still growing this morning.

With the nip of autumn in the air early mornings and at night, we decided to try a hearty soup with our freshly harvested bounty, and this recipe from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes From Around the World seemed just the ticket; for one thing, it looked as if their ingredients-list was written while checking off the items we brought home from the farm!

Of course, we take most recipes as merely a suggestion - I might be more guilty of that than my chellelu, which is why she is a better baker than I - so we adjusted the proportions toward more tomatoes and onions, but fewer capsicum and less garlic.

The general principle is this: roast the vegetables, then roughly chop them. Add them to vegetable stock, season and simmer until the flavors are blended. The recipe calls for a quarter cup of cream to be stirred into the soup when it is removed from the heat; our household was split on that however, so we placed a creamer on the table and let each person add to taste - if at all. Also on the table, a block of parmesan and a grater, and chilli flakes.

Onions, tomatoes, zucchini, bell pepper and brinjal starting to take on color
spread out on the roasting pan, drizzled with olive oil and herbs The magic part comes from a familiar quarter to us, but a new one to this kind of cuisine. Who says that tempering can only be applied to Indian food?

I use olive oil for this dish (since it used olive oil throughout). After heating the oil, I added a few black peppercorns that I have crushed, a broken red chilli and a pinch of the herbs mentioned earlier. I use fresh rosemary, so a little goes a long way because the fresh flavor is a lot more intense than the dried one. Adding this to the soup just before bringing it to the table intensifies the wonderful flavors.

Some notes and hints:

Do not crowd the vegetables on the baking sheet while roasting it; leave space around each piece so it can brown all around.

If you have a barbecue grill outside, feel free to roast any or all the vegetables out there; they have if anything an even more intense flavor.