Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Like Lamb and Tuna Fish

There are certain combinations of foods that just belong together, especially in our minds.  What goes with spaghetti?  Meatballs.  Peanut butter? Jelly.  Milk?  Cookies.  And so on and so forth.  And even though we all know that you can have spaghetti with out meatballs, peanut butter without jelly, and milk without cookies, that connection still exists in our minds.

I have a great, no awesome, no amazing, group of friends from college, and even though we are slowly spreading around the country and even around the globe, we try to get together a few times a year.  Our most reason get-together was a few days before Christmas for our secret Santa gift exchange.  Because of its central location, we decided to congregate at my parents' house.  This left me in charge of food preparation for our dinner, which was fine by me, except for the responsibility of menu planning,  I love cooking and baking, but sometimes I panic when making new things for people, because if they don't like what I've made, it's all there is and then we're stuck with it.  This may sound irrational, but that's the way it is.  However, in the end, we came up with a plan for soup and salad.  After scouring the internet/looking at foodgawker, I found two recipes that sounded wonderful: Roasted Tomato Soup and Loaded Baked Potato Soup.  The instant I found the tomato soup recipe, my brain started saying "And grilled cheese sandwiches!  No wait, MINI grilled cheese sandwiches!"  The meal was a huge success, especially my mom's brilliant idea to serve the soups in mason jars.  This was made necessary by the fact that there were ten people total eating soup for dinner that night, and two different types soups were available, and we had a total of five bowls in the house.  Unfortunately, no pictures exist from that night.  While we may be an amazing group of people, we tend to not be so great at photo-documenting.  Fortunately, all food prepared that night was so delicious I have no objections to making it again.

For the Roasted Tomato Soup, the main thing that stood out to me was the "roasted" aspect.  Oftentimes, tomato soup ends up being essentially a thinned-out smoothed-out version of tomato sauce, and while tomato sauce is delicious, if I want tomato sauce, I'll have pasta, not soup.  But the roasting changes the flavor of the tomatoes and makes it non-saucy.  To roast the tomatoes, you slice them in half, remove the stem, toss some garlic around them, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and roast until caramelized.  


And after reading the directions, I decided to add some roasted red peppers along with the roasted tomatoes (wow, two entries, two roasted red pepper recipes...).  I roasted the peppers and tomatoes separately, because I was making a pan full of peppers too, but you could of course do them at the same time, as long as you remember to rotate the peppers.  The other changes I made from the original recipe were to swap out the cayenne pepper for berbere spice (an Ethiopian spice mixture that I love), and to use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock.  I have a friend who is vegetarian which is what necessitated the swap, and after making it for a second time with chicken stock, I definitely prefer the vegetable stock version.

While the tomatoes roast, go ahead with the rest of the of the recipe, chopping onions and carrots, sauteing them in butter along with the spices.  Once the tomatoes are done, add the stock, the herbs, and the roasted peppers, tomatoes, and garlic.  Simmer away until the liquid has reduced by 1/3.  You can use the other end of a wooden spoon to measure, or you can eyeball it based on the residue left on the sides of your pot:


Once it has reduced, remove the herb stems, then blend until smooth.  For this, I highly recommend a handheld immersion blender.  I bought a $15 one, and even though it can only be used for one minute at a time (it has to rest for another minute before using it again) it is the best $15 I have spent.  The immersion blender is so much easier to use than the old technique of transferring some of the hot soup to a blender or food processor and blending a little bit at a time.  Seriously, if you like homemade soup, go get an immersion blender!  After blending, stir in the cream, then stir in the remaining broth to get the desired consistency (I used all the broth both times I have made this).  And then, voila, eat your soup!  And don't forget the mini grilled cheese sandwiches!

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup  
Adapted from Joylicious

2 red bell peppers
2 pounds fresh tomatoes
7 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 c extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
4 T butter
1 medium onion, diced
2 carrots (or a handful of mini carrots), diced
1 tsp berbere spice
1 quart stock
7 sprigs of thyme leaves
3/4 c heavy cream

  1. Roast the red peppers.  I prefer Ina Garten's method.
  2. Preheat the oven to 450.
  3. Wash, core, and cut the tomatoes in half.  Spread the tomatoes, cut sides up, and garlic cloves onto a baking sheet lined with foil.  Drizzle with olive oil, and season with salt pepper.  Roast 20-30 min until caramelized.
  4. Remove tomatoes from oven, set aside.  In a large pot, melt the butter at medium high heat.  Once it is bubbling, reduce the heat to medium low add the onion, carrot, and spice.  Saute until onions are translucent and soft.  Add 3/4 of the chicken stock, the thyme sprigs, and roasted peppers, tomatoes, and garlic.  Turn heat to high, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15-20 min or until liquid has reduced by a third.
  5. Remove the soup from heat.  Use an immersion blender to puree the soup until smooth.  Return soup to low heat, add cream and remaining stock.  Season with salt and pepper.  Serve!  
To make mini grilled cheese sandwiches, you will need a baguette, butter, and shredded cheese (I used a combination of gouda and mild cheddar, and it was delicious).  Slice the baguette into 1/2 inch slices, butter one side of each slice, and plop half of them, buttered side down, onto a heated griddle or saute pan.  Top with shredded cheese and the remaining bread slices, buttered side up.  Flip the sandwich over, and once the second side is golden brown, serve!  We ended up using 3 sandwiches per person.



The verdict: 
Absolutely delicious.  I prefer the soup made with the vegetable stock, but I still wiped my bowl clean!  And while my photography skills are still minor league at best, the white dishes do help.  But I definitely recommend this soup!

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