Cream of Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese

Ever since moving to the US, I have had the chance to try different dishes that are considered “American staples”. Chicken pot pie, mac and cheese, biscuits and gravy, S’mores, apple pie with vanilla ice cream, even peanut butter and jelly sandwich! These foods bring me and my family a sense of comfort, and so I strive to try different recipes until I find my favorite (like I’ve already found my favorite Mac & Cheese recipe).

So that brings me to today’s recipe… tomato soup. Do you say to-may-toh, or to-mah-toh? Sorry, got off on a tangent…

Back to the soup. I’ve had tomato soup and similar versions of it before in restaurants, but NEVER made them from scratch.

And from scratch, I mean from regular tomatoes, not from a can. Like from these puppies right below, fresh from my parents’ vegetable garden. Aren’t they beautiful?

So as I was looking for a good recipe for cream of tomato soup, I came across this one from Ina Garten on the Food Network. Reviews looked good, the recipe didn’t seem too complicated with off-the-wall ingredients, so I figured I would try it.

One of the problems I came across with this recipe is that I don’t have a food mill. I’ve seen one be needed in a few recipes, but then I just look for another recipe that doesn’t call for utensils I don’t have. Maybe I should eventually invest in one, but while I have a limited amount of space in my kitchen, I will make do with what I have. And what I have is a blender! The recipe below is modified to how I made the soup, but feel free to follow the original recipe as posted also.

Now, the co-star of this meal is a nice grilled cheese sandwich. We chose to use a nice smoked gouda cheese and sliced avocado in sourdough bread. The grilled cheese was a creation my husband made, so there isn’t a recipe. Whatever your favorite grilled cheese recipe would go very well with this tomato soup!

Hope you enjoy it!

Ingredients

5 Tbsp good olive oil

2 cups chopped red onions (about 3 onions)

3 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 Tbsp minced garlic (about 4 cloves)

6 pounds vine-ripened tomatoes, coarsely chopped

2 tsp sugar

2 Tbsp tomato paste

1/3 cup packed chopped fresh basil leaves, plus julienned basil leaves for garnish

4 ½ cups chicken stock

1 ½ Tbsp kosher salt

2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 – 1 ½ cup heavy cream

Croutons, for garnish

Directions

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-low heat. Add the onions and carrots and saute for about 10 minutes, until very tender. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, sugar, tomato sauce, basil, chicken stock, salt, and pepper (all ingredients except heavy cream and garnishes) and stir well. Bring the soup to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, uncovered, for 30 to 40 minutes, until the tomatoes are very tender.

When the carrots and tomatoes are very tender, use a blender to puree the soup. Then, add the cream to the soup and reheat over low heat just until hot and serve with julienned basil leaves and/or croutons, as desired.

Recipe adapted from Food Network, Barefoot Contessa

POM-a Wonderful Party!

Greetings everyone!  The amazing people at POM Wonderful have sent me great party supplies to make a pomegranate themed dinner party. Awesome, huh? When given this opportunity, I knew I wanted to throw a birthday dinner party for my dear husband. It was the perfect occasion!

But hmm… I had never really worked with pomegranate, never had pure pomegranate juice…  The only time I really paid enough attention to it was when I saw an episode about pomegranates on “Good Eats” by Alton Brown. So, with so little experience in dealing with pomegranates, I knew I had to do my homework before I committed to my menu.

I visited POM Wonderful’s website and learned from there how to open and extract the arils efficiently.  Here is POM’s easy step-by-step way to open a pomegranate:

Cut – With a sharp paring knife, cut off the top about a half inch below the crown.

Score – Once the top has been removed, four to six sections of the pomegranate divided by white membrane will be visible. With the knife’s point, score the skin along each section.

Open – Using both hands, carefully pull the pomegranate apart, breaking it into smaller sections.

Loosen – Over a bowl of water, loosen the arils and allow them to drop freely into the bowl. The arils will sink to the bottom of the bowl and the membrane will float to the top.

Scoop – Use a spoon to scoop out the pieces of white membrane that have floated to the top of the water.

Strain – Pour the arils and remaining liquid through a strainer.

Haha, no, this is not what I got from POM :) Although she certainly loved the juice and the box!

Well, that seemed easy enough! I tried it, and actually had some good fun separating the arils off of the fruit (but my kitchen looked like a horror movie…). I tried an aril (I personally did not eat the whole thing; I spit the seed out but I know of people who choose to eat the whole thing!) and it was tart and sweet at the same time. Very flavorful! If you like the taste of cranberries, it is a fruit you would really like!

Now knowing the taste of the fruit, I was able to choose the menu.

For starters, I made an appetizer of Hummus drizzled with pomegranate molasses (I found pomegranate molasses at our local international food store), served with assorted chips (pita chips, pretzel sticks, mini toasts).The hummus recipe (which is sooooooooooooo easy to make!) was from one of my favorite blogs, Annie’s Eats, inspired from Cook’s Illustrated. To go along with the wonderful appetizer, we made (and by we, I mean my husband since he is the drink “connoisseur”) a POM-tini. He modified the original recipe from Drinks Mixer a little bit in the drink presentation. Following is the modified recipe:

Ingredients:

2 oz of citron-flavored vodka

1 oz Cointreau orange liqueur

6 oz POM Wonderful Pomegranate Juice

Lemon slices for garnishing martini glass

Sugar for garnishing martini glass

Directions:

Mix first 3 ingredients in a shaker. Rub one lemon slice along each martini glass rim, then dip the glass upside-down on sugar. Add the mixed contents into the garnished glass and serve. Serves 2 glasses.

 For the main course, I made Pomegranate Lamb with Au Jus, with a side of Sweet Potato, Apple and Onion Gratin and Roasted Asparagus. Now I have to say something about the Pomegranate Lamb: the Au Jus part of this recipe is what makes the whole dish! It takes some time to reduce the chicken stock, but it is worth it! The sweetness of the pomegranate juice really complements the marinated lamb meat. The meat itself comes out so tender and moist! For this party I doubled the recipe, and people devoured all the food!

For dessert, I made a simple Vanilla Cupcake with Pomegranate Frosting. The frosting was my creation, and it is below as well. The POM juice added a slight pink/tan color to the frosting, which was a nice touch!

POM Wonderful’s Buttercream Frosting

2 sticks butter unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups confectioner’s sugar
1 Tbsp meringue powder
pinch of salt
1/4 cup POM Wonderful Pomegranate Juice 

Happy Birthday to my lovely husband. Thanks for letting me share this wonderful day with you! I love you very much!

Credit goes to all the wonderful inspirational recipes I followed:

The POM-tini is adapted from Drinks Mixer, the Pomegranate Lamb is a recipe from Foodnetwork.com, the Sweet Potato side is from the great blog Evil Shenanigans, and the Hummus and Vanilla Cupcakes are from Annie’s Eats.