The tomatoes at the market last Saturday were the kind that make you rearrange your week. Deep red, a little misshapen, warm from the crate, and they smelled like tomatoes actually should, which is to say they smelled like summer doing exactly what it's supposed to do. I bought a kilo without thinking and carried them home in a paper bag.

This is a late summer soup. It doesn't work in January, not really, no matter what the supermarket tells you. A tomato that has ripened in the sun has a sweetness and an acidity that a glass-grown one simply hasn't earned. Wait for the right tomatoes. The soup will be worth the patience.

The method is close to nothing. Halve them, lay them on a tray with garlic and oil, and let the oven do the thinking. Forty minutes later the kitchen smells roasted and sweet, the tomatoes have collapsed into something sticky and concentrated, and you're most of the way to a bowl of soup that tastes like you tried much harder than you did. Stock, a quick blend, some basil. We're only making dinner.

I wrote it down in the notebook last August: "Tomato soup. Roasted. Best of the year. Bread. Open window." Some meals don't need more description than that.