When I was a kid, I had braces on my teeth for about three years. Getting them tightened always meant a lot of tooth pain, and inability to eat anything other than the softest foods. Back in those days, it usually meant sipping some soup. I will admit that by the time my three years were up, I hated tomato soup with a passion.
The thing is, the only tomato soup I knew came pre-made from a can. I had never, ever, had tomato soup made from scratch. A few weeks ago when the pantry was getting a bit low, I found a can of tomatoes in the back and decided that I'd try making my own, sort of on a riff of a recipe I found, but also just out of my head. Then I remembered we had some bacon jam in the freezer so I dug that out, slathered it on bread with slices of cheese and grilled the works. The result was bacon studded grilled cheese and hot tomato soup to dip them in, with Kevin and I licking our fingers and smacking our lips the whole dinner through.
I think I love tomato soup again.
Serves: 2
Time to prepare: about 10 minutes
Time cook: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
one 28 oz can tomatoes ( I used diced)
1/2 onion
3 cloves garlic
olive oil
1-2 Tbsp herbes de Provence
2 1/2 cups of chicken broth
1 Tbsp tomato paste
salt and pepper to taste
1/2-1 tsp of honey (or more to taste)
Directions:
Over medium low heat, saute the onion in a bit of olive oil until softened. Add the garlic and continue to saute until fragrant. Don't let it brown! Stir in the herbes de Provence, and then the tomatoes, chicken broth, honey, tomato pate, and a bit of salt and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil and then turn the heat down to simmer and let it bubble on the stove for about 20 minutes or so.
Using a handheld blender or your counter blender, whiz up the soup so it's fairly smooth. Or you can leave chunky bits, that might be good too! If you are doing it in a blender on your stove top, be careful. Make sure to only fill the blender about 1/2 full and use the lid! You would never want to have hot soup flying everywhere.
Serve with the bacon jam grilled cheese sandwiches to dunk in the soup. We had about a bowl leftover, but you can easily double and play around with the ingredients in this soup. It's not rocket science, and this is more or less just a guide.
