Tomato Soup

Soup! All I want to eat these days is soup!

This tomato soup recipe is based on one served at Nordstrom's. Apparently dried basil, not fresh, is one of the keys here. Additionally, you can opt out of the cream for this soup; it's still good without it. I recommend making grilled cheese to go with it.

Tomato Soup
Adapted from: Serious Eats

Ingredients

6 tablespoons olive oil
4 large carrots, peeled and diced
1 large onion, sliced
3- 28oz cans whole peeled Roma tomatoes
4 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon crushed dried basil
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a large, heavy saucepan heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add carrots and onion and cook until they begin to soften, about 10 minutes. Add basil and cook until the vegetables are completely softened.

2. Add tomatoes and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, or 45 minutes if time permits.

3. Allow soup to cool slighty and use an immersion blender to blend the soup. Stir in cream and season with salt and pepper. 

Vodka Sauce, Take Two

Vodka sauce on pasta is probably one of my top five favorite foods.  I've made it once before but wasn't crazy about the results.  This recipe was really good; the crushed red pepper gave it a nice kick.  I made a few changes because the sauce was still really thin after only 30 minutes of simmering.  I ended up simmering it for 2 hours, until it was nice and thick.  This reduces the quantity of sauce a bit, so if you do this and are making sauce for a pound of pasta, I would double the recipe.

Next time I'll probably separately sauté more pancetta and add it in at the end.  It gave the sauce a great taste, but was fairly undetectable by the time the sauce was ready.

Vodka Sauce
Adapted from: Food and Wine

Ingredients

1/4 cup olive oil
2 ounces pancetta, diced
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 cup vodka
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 35-ounce can whole peeled Italian tomatoes with their juices, crushed by hand
Pinch of sugar
2 basil leaves
1/4 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper

1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat.  Add the pancetta, garlic (leave them whole), and crushed red pepper and stir occasionally, about 5 minutes, until golden. 

2. Deglaze the mixture with vodka and then add the tomato paste, stirring for about a minute.  Add the crushed tomatoes with their juices, stir in the sugar and basil leaves, and bring to a boil.  Then use the extra vodka to make yourself a bloody mary while you wait for the sauce to simmer (optional, but recommended).  

3. Reduce heat and simmer the sauce until it reaches your preferred consistency.  Remove basil and garlic and stir in heavy cream.  Simmer for another 5 minutes. 



The photos aren't spectacular but the sauce was! My sister and I share an obsession for adding broccoli to pasta with vodka sauce, hence the broccoli in the photo above.

Strawberry and Cream Paletas

Paletas are Latin American ice pops made with fresh fruit and they are delicious.  Unfortunately, I could not get the ice pops out of the cheap plastic molds that I bought, so my friend and I had to eat them with spoons. They were still eaten, so c'est la vie.

The recipe said to pour warm water over the base of the molds to release the ice pops, but that didn't work. Does anyone know a better way to do this?

Strawberry and Cream Ice Pops
(Paletas de Fresas y Crema)
From: Saveur

Ingredients

1 pound strawberries, hulled
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1. Purée strawberries in a blender or food processor. Set a fine mesh strainer over a bowl and push the mixture through the strainer with a flat spatula, leaving any solid strawberry pieces behind. Pour the mixture into four 3-ounce ice pop molds.

2. Freeze ice pops for at least an hour, until slushy, then put the popsicle stick into the mold. Freeze for about 3 hours more, then remove ice pops from molds by running warm water at the base of each mold.



You don't really need to see a photo of strawberries, but the color looked nice:

Mixture:

Strainer over bowl: 

Blasted molds: