Tomatoes!

Tomato soup and Grilled cheese


An old, yet delicious, classic.  Homemade tomato soup is so flavourful and delicious.  Canned tomato soup will be ruined for you.  I've made some croutons for the soup and a fantastic grilled cheese.  It's good to have the croutons done when the soup is finished so put them in the oven first and they should be done by the time the soup is ready.  


Soup Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 shallot, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, diced
• 1 small carrot, peeled and finely diced
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 pound fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped, or 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, juices reserved
• 2 cups veg or chicken broth
• 2 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon fresh basil or 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 2 teaspoons fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
• 1 bay leaf
• pinch of sugar
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• Salt and pepper
• Sriracha, to taste

Directions: 

1.  In a large pot, bring several cups of water to a boil, enough to cover the tomatoes.  Cut an x in the bottom of the tomatoes and drop them into the boiling water, in two batches if necessary.   Let them sit for only about 30 seconds, until the skins start to peel away where they've been cut.  Remove from water and let them cool to touch.  Peel off the skins, cut into quarters and remove seeds.  Roughly chop.  

 2. In the same pot, on medium high, add the butter and oil until its melty.  Toss in the onion, celery, carrots, shallots and garlic. Cook, stirring regularly, until they start to soften, about 5 minutes, careful not to burn the garlic.  Add the flour and stir until it's all mixed in.  Stir in the tomato, stock, tomato paste, sugar, basil, thyme and bay leaf.  Bring to a boil, then put the lid on and reduce heat.  Let it simmer for about 15 minutes.  Toss out the bay leaf.

3.  Using a blender, puree the soup until smooth and season with salt and pepper.  Stir in sour cream and heat through.  Transfer to bowl and garnish with sour cream, sriracha (or favourite hot sauce), and croutons.  

Croutons:  Are great for soup garnishes or on salads.  You can make them with any herbs or spices.  Try different kinds of bread too!

Ingredients:

French loaf

basil

oregano

parsley

sage

olive oil

1. Slice up the bread into cubes.  They can be bigger or smaller depending on what you want.  Toss them in a bowl with the herbs in any combination you want.  Drizzle them with olive oil, stir them around and drizzle again if needed. you want each one to have a bit of oil on them but not be drenched.  Spread them out on a baking sheet that has been covered in tin foil and put them into an oven heated to 300 degrees.  Bake for about 20 minutes, flipping halfway, until they are crispy and start to brown.  Bigger croutons will bake for longer.  

Grilled Cheese: I've made many a grilled cheese in my life and this one was way up there with the best of them.

Ingredients:

Pumpernickel bread

Sliced swiss cheese

Very thinly sliced tomato

Chopped fresh basil

Good quality genoa salami

Butter

Spread butter on the bread and flip it over put down layers of cheese, meat, tomato, basil, then more cheese and top with second slice of buttered bread (butter should be on outside of bread for any grilled cheese noobs).  Heat a frying pan over medium heat and gently lay sandwich down.  Let it cook for a couple minutes until the bottom cheese starts to look melty.  Gently flip over. I find it best to use the spatula to remove the sandwich from the pan, then turn the pan vertically, so the sandwich and the pan make half of the rotation together.  Cook until heated through.  Slice in half and serve.  

All together, it was a tasty dinner:

coleslaw

There was quite a bit of cabbage, carrots and onion left over from making yakisoba.  I thought to myself "Self, what can you make with this?"  and I answered "Coleslaw!".  Pulling the reliable Betty Crocker off the shelf, I  started grabbing ingredients.

Ingredients

Once I had everything assembled it was time to start making the dressing.  All of the non vegetable ingredients went into the bowl.  

- 3/4 cup mayo

- 1 T sugar

- 2 t lemon juice

- 2 t dijon mustard

- 1/2 tsp celery seed (I only had celery salt and used 1/4 t)

- 1 t dill weed

- salt and pepper to taste

Mix it all up really well and adjust seasonings to taste.

Dressing

Put the dressing aside for a minute and start preparing the veggies.

- 1/2 head of cabbage

- 1/2 medium onion

- 1 large carrot

If you have a whole head of cabbage, take off the outer leaves and chop in half.  Slice the cabbage very, very thinly and then turn the cabbage and chop a few more times. Or, use a food processor to slice really thinly.

thinly sliced cabbage

turn and chop

Put all the cabbage in the bowl with the dressing but you don't need to mix it in yet.  Chop the onion into small  pieces, and shred the carrot either with a grater or food processor.  Dump these in the bowl with the cabbage and dressing and mix well.  

carrots and onions added

All mixed up. Yum!

This coleslaw really needs to sit for a while to get flavourfully.  Cover it and put it in the fridge for at least an hour but preferably around a day.  If it seems like the dressing has disappeared when you take it out of the fridge, add a bit more mayo.  

Some substitutions could be using half mayo and half sour cream or plain yogurt.  Betty suggests making a tropical coleslaw by adding 8 oz pineapple tidbits in with the veggies and topping with toasted nuts just before serving.  

I would love to try this with other root veggies like beets or turnips.  Sounds yummy and colourful. 

yakisoba

Japanese food is probably my favourite type of food.  It could be that my husband and I first started dating when we were both living on Okinawa.  Or it could be that it's delicious! Today, I decided to make yakisoba and luckily I had some ingredients in the freezer.  The asian food store in the town where we live has a yakisoba kit that has the noodles and sauce.  Last time I was there I made sure to stock up on it.  You can find yakisoba sauce at any Japanese food store and most asian food stores.

In Okinawa the most common ingredients for yakisoba are cabbage, onion, carrots and spam.  You can also add bell peppers, bean sprouts, water chestnuts or pretty much anything.  It's such a popular dish in Okinawa that it's what there are generally yakisoba vendors at festivals and fairs.

Today, I decided to just add cabbage onion and carrots.

I actually only ended up using one of the carrots since I only made two servings.  I used half the onion, thinly sliced and maybe a cup of cabbage, also thinly sliced.  

Saute the veggies in a large frying pan with tbsp of oil for a few minutes, until they're about half cooked.  Remove from the pan and heat another tbsp of oil with 1/4 cup of water and the noodles.  Cook the noodles until they are heated through and not sticking together.  Add the veggies and yakisoba sauce back into the pan and cook until veggies are done and sauce is mixed through.  

Yum!