One of my husband's childhood favorites. This tomato soup is worth eating, unlike the horrific canned stuff.
Tomato Soup mats
1 Tb olive oil
1 Tb butter
1 onion, chopped into 1 cm chunks
5 cloves crushed garlic
2 celery stalks, chopped into 1 cm chunks
1 carrot, chopped into 1 cm hunks
1 Tb flour
2 28oz cans whole peeled tomatoes. Or 2 of Mom's mason jars of tomatoes (14 down, 13 to go!)
1 tsp white sugar
4 leaves fresh basil
½ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ cup heavy cream. This is the smallest of the little cardboard containers they sell. Or just use regular milk.
How-To:
Melt the butter and olive oil in a pot over low heat. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes, stirring once or twice.
Add the carrots, celery and garlic. Cook on low for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep the veg from browning.
Add the flour and stir until you can't see white flour bits anymore.
Add the tomatoes, sugar, salt, and pepper. Stir. Increase the heat to medium-low and cook for 25 minutes (uncovered! We're reducing it). If it starts to bubble so much you're getting tomato splatter, your heat is way too high. You want the bubbles to be just barely breaking the surface. Stir every 10 minutes or so.
Turn off the heat and it's time to blend. Either run it through a food processor, a blender, or your handy-dandy stick immersion blender until it's completely smooth. No chunky bits!
With the heat still off, add the cream/milk and stir to combine.
Dish into bowls and top with the basil leaves, torn/snipped into little bits.
DOUBLE FEATURE!
Awesome Grilled Cheese
Mats:
6 slices nice bread. I use sourdough because it's chewy and doesn't have a hard crust.
1/4 lb Munster cheese
1/4 lb Cheddar cheese
1/4 lb Provolone cheese
1/4 cup grated Peccorino-Romano cheese
Mayonaise
How-to:
Spread the tiniest bit of mayo on one side of all the slices of bread. You're just using it as a cheese binder. Or you can use soft butter, but mayo is, regrettably, easier to work with.
Put the bread mayo-side-down in the grated Peccorino-Romano and press gently to get the grated cheese to stick to the bread.
Put two slices each of the other cheeses on the mayo-free sides of the three sandwiches you're making.
Close the sandwiches with the other bread, cheese side out.
Grill until the cheese on the inside is melty and the cheese on the outside is crisp and browned.
