Tag Archives: Tomato Soup

Butternut Squash and Tomato Soup with Coconut Bacon

If the combination of butternut squash and tomato sounds a bit strange, you’re not alone. It seemed like an odd pairing to me as well, when I read about it on bonappetit.com. But when I considered the elements more carefully, it made perfect sense. Butternut squash on it’s own makes quite a sweet soup, which I always enjoy for the first few spoonfuls,. But then it becomes cloying and not terribly nuanced. It always reminds me of baby food. But give the squash a shot of acid, in the form of a tomato and we’re talking a whole different ballgame of flavour. Rich and complex, each spoonful offers a fresh perspective.

The most difficult part of making this soup is cutting the butternut squash in half. Even when I use my 12 inch chef’s blade, my knife always gets stuck halfway through the squash. Then I lift the whole thing in the air and fling it back down on the cutting board, praying that the force will split the squash and I will escape unbloodied. It usually works.

Once you get the squash cut in half, scoop out the seeds, give it a slick of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Place each half facedown on a parchment lined baking sheet. Tuck a peeled clove of garlic under each half and roast in a hot oven for about 45 minutes, until soft.

Now comes the fun part. No need to scoop the flesh out of the shell. It just peels right off in one piece. It reminded me of when I was little and I’d watch my mom peel apples with a paring knife. She’d get all the peel off in one long coil. I thought she was magic! Once the squash is cooked, sauté some onions, jalapeño and ginger until soft. Add the squash, canned tomatoes and some liquid (water, chicken or vegetable broth) and let the whole lot simmer for about 20 minutes. An immersion blender makes quick work of pureeing.Ok, let’s get to the coconut bacon! Which is’t really bacon at all, just coconut flakes tarted up with some liquid smoke, tamari sauce, maple syrup and brown sugar. The whole lot gets baked until brown and crispy.Coconut bacon is the genius idea of Molly over at mynameisyeh. It is crunchy, a little bit smoky, salty and sweet. It is the perfect garnish for this soup and any leftover is fantastic in salad. I must admit , I’m a little bit addicted to it.

Click here to print recipe for Butternut-Squash-Tomato-Soup-with-Coconut-Bacon.

Spicy Roasted Tomato and Corn Soup

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It strikes me as quite ironic that while we consider the cracks and crevices in the skin of
heirloom tomatoes beautiful and even desirable, the same qualities in the skin of an aging woman are not. Yet I digress. We’re here to talk about tomatoes, not the skin of mature women. There’s enough conversation about that topic everywhere we turn these days.
I feel as though I have eaten my weight in heirloom tomatoes this summer. I buy them every time I see them, which has been every few days over the past 6 weeks. The local supermarket near my cottage has been carrying them all summer. Heirloom tomatoes just taste better than hybrid tomatoes. There are actually a few reasons for this. Most heirloom plants produce only 2-3 tomatoes. What that means is that all the energy of the plant is concentrated into fewer tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes have more locules, those little cavities in the tomato where the seeds are housed, than hybrid tomatoes.According to Christopher Kimball of Cook’s Illustrated, the seeds are the most flavourful part of the tomato. “It turns out the seed in [the tomato] jelly … has three times more flavor compounds called glutamates than the flesh, so when you seed the tomato… you’re actually throwing out most of the flavour.”

Mostly I have been slicing the tomatoes, sprinkling them with salt and basil and just eating them that way. Some days I get fancy and dice them up, mix with a bit of garlic, olive oil, coarse salt and basil and let them macerate for about an hour. Then I toss the tomatoes with some hot pasta and grated Parmesan cheese. The other morning there was a bit of nip in the air, before it rose to 30°C (86°F), and I started craving something roasted. I was over raw.

This soup was inspired by a roasted tomato and corn soup created by blogger Adrianna Adarme, over at PBS’s food blog, Fresh Taste. if you can’t find heirloom tomatoes, just substitute some large beefsteak tomatoes.

The spice in the soup comes from a combination of of heat sources: jalapeño, ancho chile powder and a bit of cayenne. Some cumin and smoked paprika round out the seasoning. The sweetness of the corn is a perfect complement to acidic juicy tomatoes. I pureed the soup and then strained it for an extra velvety texture. This is the perfect transitional soup to help you manage the difficult shift from summer to fall.

Click here to print the recipe for Spicy Roasted Tomato and Corn Soup.

Brown Sugar Roasted Tomato Soup

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This is a photo of my backyard. Last week 40 centimeters of snow fell on our city and yesterday, to add insult to injury, an additional 25 centimeters piled up! That’s over 2 feet of snow for those of you not familiar with the metric system. In any language, it’s a sh#@load of snow!

Just In case there is any doubt about where I fall on the love-hate spectrum of winter, I reside on the far right. I despise winter! However, my oldest son recently became certified to teach skiing, so in the generous spirit of the season, I am thrilled for him and all the skiers out there.

Last week, I promised no more cookie postings in December. However, I did not promise no more sugar. I couldn’t go cold turkey without sugar, so there is just a little bit of brown sugar in the following recipe. I felt that I needed to offer you a warm buffer against the nastiness that is winter.

A big bowl of steaming hot tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich are the consummate comfort lunchtime meal for many a school age child. That being said, my childhood lunchtime never included this classic tummy warmer.

When I was growing up, my sisters and I came home from school everyday for lunch. Our public school was a short 8-minute walk from our house. The walk could be done in 7 minutes if we took the shortcut, but I seem to recall that we had to pass by a scary house if we took it, so we toughed out the extra minute. We always watched the Flintstones at lunchtime and usually ate Kraft Dinner or a Swanson’s Chicken Pot Pie or a T.V. Dinner. Hey, it was the 70’s and we were a modern family!

I never really developed a taste for tomato soup until recently. I tried Campbell’s tomato soup in university and didn’t particularly care for it. If I needed comfort, my go-to soup was my mom’s chicken soup or, in a pinch, Campbell’s Chicken Noodle.

Lately, I have been noticing tomato soup popping up on restaurant menus and on all the food web sites and magazines. The world is a darker and scarier place now and I suppose tomato soup is the quintessential reminder of those simpler, gentler times.

I discovered this Brown Sugar Roasted Tomato Soup on www.seriouseats.com. I get an e-mail everyday from them. Serious Eats is a website focused on celebrating and sharing food enthusiasm through blogs, video and online community. They are passionate about food, informative, inclusive and, most importantly, they make me laugh.

Instead of serving this soup with the traditional grilled cheese sandwich, it gets a topping of cheddar cheese croutons. Brilliant, and quite delicious, this may become your new favourite go to comfort food when your world seems a little too treacherous and uncertain to handle.

Canned tomatoes are drained and then topped with a little brown sugar to enhance their natural sweetness. A quick roasting in the oven and the tomatoes and brown sugar caramelize into sweet deliciousness.

Finely grated cheddar cheese and olive oil get massaged into some whole grain bread cubes and then the whole lot gets tossed into a hot oven.

Click here to print recipe for Brown Sugar Roasted Tomato Soup.

The Best Thing I Ate Today in Umbria Day 10 (Our last day!)

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Before I get down to the business of reporting on Day 10 I am excited to share with you the debut post of a brand new young food blogger. (O.K, full disclosure here, it’s my daughter, and I couldn’t be prouder). Check out her first post at http://bostonbakesforbreastcancer.org/tales-of-a-chocoholic/

O.K. back to Day 10 in Umbria.

My original plan, when I embarked on my trip to Umbria, was to blog at the end of each day, about the single best thing I had eaten. Boy was that a naive plan! First of all, trying to narrow down the best thing you ate all day, while travelling through Italy, is no easy task. Almost every morsel I put in my mouth had me declaring, “Could be the best thing I”ve eaten today!” Secondly, after attempting to blog on my first night, full with both food and wine and exhausted from touring all day, I quickly realized I would not be able to write a very coherent post. So I decided to take lots of photos and notes and do it all when I got home. I arrived home on Sept 25! It has taken me over 7 weeks to post about all 10 days, but here we are, finally at the end.

We decided to just hang out at our incredible villa for our last day before the magic was over, and we all turned back into pumpkins to return to our real lives. Although, the body shapes of some of us was beginning to resemble pumpkins, after 10 days of eating our way through the Umbrian countryside. Over breakfast we just feasted our eyes on the incredible views from our terrace.

Liria, our wonderful host, volunteered to give us a cooking class this morning. She offered to teach us whatever we wanted to learn. Without even hesitating, I told Liria I needed to know how to make pappa al pomodoro, the Tuscan tomato bread soup I’d eaten at Cibreo in Florence. Without a doubt, this was the best thing I ate on our trip. I was smitten with this soup.

We gathered in the kitchen and Liria outfitted us with out aprons, chef”s hats and gloves. Gloves??? Wow, I was impressed. When I remarked to Liria how blown away I was with her attention to hygiene, she laughed and said, that she only wears the gloves to protect her manicure and figured that we were like-minded women. Boy, had she pegged us right!

The kitchen here at the villa is a sight to behold. I coveted it all, but most especially, the induction cooktop. I had always thought that a gas cooktop was the best, but the temperature control you get with this cooktop is incredible. The marble back splash was nothing to sneeze at either!

We began with fresh plum tomatoes, basil, spring onions and salt. They were simmered for about 15 minutes and then transferred to a food mill for processing. The food mill is an extremely handy kitchen tool. The skins and seeds of the tomato are separated from the flesh and no peeling is required on your part! It also makes incredible applesauce (no peeling required) and wonderful, fluffy mashed potatoes. We all got a chance to have a spin.

While the tomatoes were being milled, Liria gently simmered some garlic, basil and, her secret ingredient, whole cloves, in a generous glug of olive oil. I was shocked that she used cloves. They are one of the few spices I can not stomach the aroma of. I find them extremely cloying and leave them out of every recipe that calls for them. Liria said that she only uses 4 of them for a huge pot of soup and you can’t really taste them. They just add a background note that enhances all the flavours. She stressed that low heat is key at this stage, as you do not want to brown the garlic, as it would become bitter. After a 10 minute low simmer, the tomato puree is added and that cooks for an additional 10 minutes.

The final addition is breadcrumbs to thicken the soup.

After an additional 10 minutes of simmering, the soup is ladled into bowls and finished off with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and some fresh julienned basil.

Click here to get the recipe for Papa al Pomodoro.

After lunch we had a chance to tour the gardens and see all the fresh produce that grows here at Casali di Monticchio. Grapes, eggplant, olives and figs are just a few of the things we observed, in addition to chickens in a coop for farm fresh scrambled eggs every morning.

For our farewell aperitivo, Liria pulled out all the stops and fed us a feast. Even the villa dog, Parcetta, perked up when the prosciutto came out!

I feel so grateful to have such wonderful and loving friends to have shared this incredible journey with. What a ride it’s been! Thanks to all who have followed along to read about our adventure.

Salt and Serenity

Tales from my kitchen