2013 - WEEKLY CHALLENGE/TRY #2 - Roasted Tomato Soup

For those who knows me, knows I LOVE food. But what they don’t know is that I have NEVER made soup from scratch. Ok, maybe once in Highschool’s cooking class doing a french onion soup, but that is it! I make soup out of the can.

So after months and months spent on Pinterest, and pinning various soup recipes I might add, I finally decided on Kitchen Runway’s Roasted Tomato Soup. You can find the recipe I used here. 

I did improvised a little when purchasing my ingredients… I had a little “trouble” finding some specific items…so I improvised a little, here are the changes I made… The recipe called for:

1 lb of heirloom tomatoes - store didn’t have “heirloom” so I opped for tomatoes on the vine, about 5 of them

2 lbs of plum tomatoes, quartered - plum tomatoes? I picked up 5 regular red tomatoes… not sure if it’s 2lbs or not.

8 cloves of garlic, peeled - I have a jar of chopped garlic at home, so I just chucked 2 table spoons into the soup

½ C heavy cream - instead of using heavy cream, I used 2% milk….and 1 table spoon of cream cheese.

Oh and I also added 2 cans of crab meat into the soup!

On another note, I picked up a $9.99 CAD immersion blender from the Real Canadian Superstore just for this soup. And I LOVED my purchase. The blender (what’s the difference between a $10 one than a $50 one aside from the multiple speed?) worked wonders. I did however learned to not pull the blender out of the soup when my finger is still holding the on button down…

 

I made a giant pot of this Roasted Tomato Soup, and it lasted me about a week. The soup turned out great… my boyfriend was thrilled to hear I didn’t use heavy cream, but just 2% milk… I dilemma though, I use to love going to Burgoo for their Crab Bisque.. well let’s just say mine tastes about the same :)

Onto week 3.

goddessofscrumptiousness:

Spaghetti in Garlic Gravy with Herbs and Lemon Marinated Chicken and Cherry Tomatoes

This pasta recipe I came up spontaneously. And cooked this dish 30 minutes right after I conceptualized and imagined how the taste would be.

I just thought that lemon (juice and zest), thyme, rosemary, extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper to marinate and flavor the chicken chunks would already make the meat so delish. I had a tray of cherry tomatoes in the chiller and the sauce… I figured that it would be wonderful if I can taste some chickeny goodness in the pasta itself, so I decided that instead of making a proper pasta sauce I’ll make a gravy (make that as the sauce), flavor it with a tiny hint of basil and some big savory punch of garlic.

Ingredients:

500 grams spaghetti pasta (cooked al dente)

1 pound chicken breast fillets (skinless and boneless, sliced into 1 inch chunks)

For the chicken marinade:

2 teaspoons fresh thyme, chopped

2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped (if using dried, use half of the amount)

Zest of 1 lemon

Juice of ½ a lemon

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon coarse salt (not table salt)

½ teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (to sauté the marinated chicken)

-  Add all the marinade ingredients into the chicken and marinate for 20 minutes (if making this dish in pronto) or over night (if making this dish the next day… much better).

-  Saute the marinated chicken in extra virgin olive oil until cooked (about 4-5 minutes) then set aside.

For the garlic gravy:

½ stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

4 large cloves garlic, finely minced

2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 ½ cups chicken stock

1 Tablespoon fresh basil, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

¼ cup parsley, chopped (to sprinkle/finish the pasta)

½ cup grated parmesan cheese

2 cups whole cherry tomatoes

-  Place sauté pan over medium heat and add butter and olive oil.

-  Saute garlic until fragrant and soft.

-  Add the flour and cook for a minute.

-  Add chicken stock and simmer gravy until thickened then add the chopped basil.

-  Season with salt and pepper.

-  Add the sauteed chicken in the gravy then toss the cooked spaghetti into this  sauce.

-  Add the cherry tomatoes and finish the dish with the chopped parsley and grated parmesan cheese (serve extra on the side).

Makes 5-6 servings

Goddess of Scrumptiousness Food Photography and Original Recipes by Jeannie Maristela are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at goddessofscrumptiousness.tumblr.com