recipe a week #30: tomato soup and hot hot heat*

- - - Guest blogger alert: This is Adam. Sherrie's in the kitchen cooking in order to satisfy a peanut butter cookie craving. Even though it's her craving, I think trading blogging for cookies is a good deal. - - -

Tomato Soup (from the October 2009 issue of Everyday Food)

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large red onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped (I pressed. It's easier.)
coarse salt and ground pepper
3 large tomatoes, about 2 pounds total, cored and chopped
1 cup low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
1/4 cup heavy cream

Directions:
1 In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium. Add onion and garlic; season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, until onion softens, 4 to 6 minutes. Add tomatoes and increase heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring, until tomatoes begin to break down, 4 to 6 minutes.

2 Add broth and 1 cup water. Simmer until tomatoes are very soft, about 10 minutes. In batches, puree soup in a blender (use caution when blending hot liquids). Return soup to pot and simmer 1 minute; stir in cream and season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and cover to keep warm.


Sherrie took the lovely picture of the chestnuts above a couple of days ago. She was out for a walk and came back with her pockets full. The reason it's showing up now is because we were both too interested in eating the soup to spend the time to take a picture where it didn't look like someone had already digested it.

I've been doing my best recently to make sure that I'm trying new recipes when I make meals. Without a concerted effort we'd be eating an awful lot of even more baked potatoes and salad. For the past couple of weeks, I've been raiding the pages of Sherrie's current and past copies of Everyday Food when making our menus. Everyday Food is the only corner of the Martha cult that I can really enjoy (zombie voice "Must do whatever Martha says"). I love that the recipes are all real food ingredients instead of boxed or canned junk. They're also mostly easy enough that even I can make them. All that to say, this soup is fantastic. It was really easy to make and tasted incredible. I initially balked at using the whole red onion but the flavour really mellows out and goes well with the tomato. We're still waiting for our big tomatoes to ripen so we bought some fresh local tomatoes. The magazine includes a recipe for cheese and bacon toasties to go with it but lacking bacon or regular bread I made some cheesy baguette bites instead. Overall, easy and delicious.



This beautiful cayenne pepper grew in our backyard. I planted them as an experiment to see if they would have enough time to ripen. Success! I'm not much for spicy food but I love the look of them. I'll photograph them and then set them loose to wreak havoc on someone else's digestive system.

Well, Sherrie finished her cookies before I finished the post. Mmmmm, they're delicious.

*Sorry if you were looking for Hot Hot Heat.