Selective Palate

I feel like I have so many things to blog about. I made this great soup, we had a wonderful yet unconventional valentines meal, and a traditional Sunday dinner, compliments of Top Chef! Since there is just so much time and attention span I will plit them up.

Today’s post is all about the soup. I love soup and M likes grilled cheese so I decided to do a grown up version for dinner one chilly, rainy night last week. I took inspiration from this recipe and paired it with a wonderful grilled cheese made with fresh mozzarella and basil leaves!

First the soup:

I started with these bueatiful Roma tomatoes.

I know it is not the season but I found these at my local grocery store and they were from a local hydroponic farmer. They smelled wonderfull. But as soon as the farmers market is back I will have to make this again.
anyway this is what I did…

Ingredients

For the Tomatoes
2 lbs roma tomatoes
olive oil
4 (or so) cloves of garlic, minced
Several sprigs fresh thyme
Salt and pepper

Halves the tomatoes and throw them in a bowl cover with about a 4 count of olive oil (since they were going to be roasting I used regular olive oil nothing fancy). After removing the leaves of the thyme from the branches add to the tomatoes with a heavy pinch of salt and pepper to taste. Mix thoroughly and spread out on a baking sheet. Roast in a 475 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

For the Soup
Ingredients

Roasted tomatoes
olive oil
1 small onion or 1/2 a large onion chopped fairly fine
1 cup chicken stock or veggie stock
1/4 cup dry red wine
2-3 T. tomato paste
1 T. fresh oregano
1 cup 1/2 & 1/2, heavy cream or milk (I used 1/2 & 1/2 and it was plenty rich)

Heat the oil and saute the onions until translucent. Scrape the tomatoes and everything on the pan into the oinions and mix well while adding the stock. Use a stick blender to puree the soup but leave it a little chunky (if you do not have a stick blender pour the stock and tomatoes in a processor and pulse till desired consistency then return to pot). Mix the paste and wine together and add to soup, stir well to incorporate. Add oregano and let simmer to develop flavors. When almost ready to serve, warm cream in microwave and whisk into soup.

To serve,

I loved the idea of the inspiration recipe, she had left over rice and added it to the soup, I too had leftover rice but I didn’t want to add that much of it to the soup, I still needed good dunkablity for my grilled cheeses! So I warmed up the rice and put about 1/3 cup in each bowl then ladled in the the soup. I topped it with thinly sliced basil and Parmesan cheese.

Along side I stuffed some multi-grain bread with fresh mozzarella and basil leaves. I grilled them in olive oil weighing them down with heavy cans. They came up perfect and crispy.

All in all a great raining night meal for 2!

Dinner for 2

That’s it for now; next time my nontraditional Valentine’s Dinner!