Creamy Totato Soup

I had been looking at the very large bowl in the fridge of the leftover tomatoe juice that I did not  use when canning the tomatoes on the weekend.   I had removed all the tomatoes and now I had all this liquid.    I had told myself I  would do something with it.   So I decided I would make tomato soup.  A first for me on that too.   I make lots of soup  just not tomatoe.  Not sure why, must be something about having the canned stuff when I was younger.

Today I searched for a recipe and found a Martha Stewart Creamy Tomato Soup and then checked Joy the Baker and found she  used the same recipe. So I knew this was the one I wanted.  Plus I didn't want to go shopping for any ingredients.   


Here is Creamy Tomato Soup, from Joy the Baker

Creamy Tomato Soup
adapted from Martha Stewart
serves 6

4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, finely diced
course sea salt and fresh black pepper
splash of red wine vinegar (just over 1 Tablespoon)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 dried bay leaf
2 cans (14 1/2-ounces each) low sodium chicken broth
2 cans (28-ounces each) whole peeled tomatoes in juice (with basil if available)
1/2- 3/4 cup whole milk or cream

In a large saucepan or Dutch oven melt butter over medium heat. Add oil, carrot and onion and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the onion is translucent and the carrots are well on their way to softening, about 7 to 8 minutes. Add the splash of vinegar at stir until cooked off.

Turn flame to low and add flour. Incorporate into the onion and carrots. Add tomato paste and cook for 1 minute to distribute the paste and cook off the flour taste.

Add chicken broth and bay leaf.  With clean hands add the tomatoes to the pot, breaking the whole tomatoes up with your hands as you add the tomatoes and the juice. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove from heat. Using an emulsion blender, puree soup in pot until you’ve reached the desired consistency. Maybe you like more chunks than some folks! If you don’t have an emulsion blender, let the soup cool for about 30 minutes and, working in two or three batches, puree some of the soup in a conventional blender until smooth. Place pureed soup in a bowl and puree the remainder in the pot.

Return pureed soup to the pot and stir in milk or cream. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Let cool to room temperature before dividing among airtight containers or jars (leaving 1 inch of space at the top) and freeze.



I have to say that my recipe is also adapted.   I probably had 6 cups of the liquid from the tomatoes, so I did not add canned tomatoes or the broth as the recipe called for. I also added my own tomatoe paste I made from here.    Somehow I felt it need some rice.  So I added about 1/2 cup of brown rice (uncooked).   I  let the soup cook for at least 1 hour to make sure the rice well cooked.

You can adapt this recipe to whatever you have around in your kitchen that you want to use up.make it yours.


Delicous !!!  

I`m very proud of how many home grown ingredients went into this soup.  There was the onions, carrots, tomatoes, and the thyme.  Now how can the soup possibly go wrong.

Alice

September Review

Just the other day I looked at the date on my last post here and realized that it was the end of September and I didn`t post once in the month.

These are a few things I did in September.

Starting first with some canning.  I had received from mother-in-law who did a lot of canning over many years, her canning equipment.  

We bought 20lbs worth of peaches and decided to give it a go.  My husband gave me a hand and it was definetely a two man job.   I had followed instructions as per my mother-in-law, as well checked out some websites.   The first time it seems like you have so many pots and equipment going on at the same time, but I could see this being enjoyable once you know what you are doing.

We blanched the peaches and removed the skins packed them in the sterilized jars and then poured a syrup in the jars (2 cups of sugar to 4 cups of water)  I put my syrup in a kettle on the stove, it made it much easier to pour into the jars.  We used pint sized jars,  as it suited  our needs better.   We made approximately 18 jars in total.  Which I`m sure  will be sharing.

We had planted  approximately 12 tomatoe plants in the garden this year.   We had a couple cherry tomatoe plants as well that gave us lots of tomatoes (all at once of course), but the regular tomatoes took a long time to blossom and then to ripen.  We brought all of them in recently and put them in a box covered with newpaper.  Also lined our kitchen window with some that were nearly ripened.

This Sunday I decided to give canning a try..   After checking out some sites on canning, I found that it was recommended after removing the tomatoe peels to put the tomatoes in a pot and bring them to a 5 min boil.   Since I had never canned tomatoes before this is what I did.    We put as many  tomatoes we could in a jar along with some hot tomatoe juice and lemon juice, it was starting to look more like tomate sauce.     Next time I will cook down the tomatoes and make tomato sauce.   Ideally the best tomatoes would have been Roma tomatoes for this, but that is not what we had.

All in all I`m very happy at how much we made.  Not sure how many pounds we had, maybe 8-10 lbs.  

Onto some knitting.   This is Current.  I have had this pattern for awhile and once I had the right yarn I decided to make this for the summer.  It`s a super light summer weight  and the only thing I can say about it, is that I have to stop knitting cardigans in light blue colours in Madelinetosh yarn. This one looks so similar to this one.  

This is one pattern that I had made many times.  This I made for my nephew`s  5 year old daughter`s birthday this summer.  I had made her mom one and then her oldest sister, so it seemed  right that she would get one too.  These bright colours were exactly what  she liked.   I found one skein of yarn that had them all !!!    The family was so impressed that I had all her favourite colours in that one beret.   Here are my notes.    

I could have shared all this with you in one month instead of fitting it all on day, but like they say `better late than never`   Today is the first of October so I`m starting my month in a good way.   My first post.

Alice