I'm cheating a bit this week with the soup as it is not my own recipe. Panera Bread had sent me(not just me, anyone on their mailing list!!) a recipe for their tomato soup and I have been wanting to give it a try(I love tomato soup, homemade anyway). Today is a great day to make it as the recipe says that it only takes 25 minutes to cook and since I'm a little pressed for time, this sounded like a deal to me.
I'm happy to say that the soup tastes just as good as theirs. I did make just a couple of changes which I will make note of as I go through the recipe.
The ingredients;
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 1 large clove garlic, minced
- 2 ribs celery, chopped
- 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 5 large super-ripe tomatoes (about 4 pounds), coarsely chopped
- 1 teaspoon sugar
4 leaves fresh basil + 1 tablespoon chopped - ¾ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon ground black pepper*I added quite a bit more. - Pinch of ground cayenne (optional)*I added about 1/8 of a teaspoon as I wanted to at least taste the pepper.
- 1 teaspoon of celery seed(I added the celery seed, not part of the original recipe, because I like a richer celery taste)
DIRECTIONS
- Warm the oil and butter in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, and celery, and cook until soft but not browned, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.
- Add the tomatoes (with juices), sugar, basil leaves, salt, black pepper, and cayenne (if using). Increase the heat to high and bring the tomatoes to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 15 minutes, skimming off and discarding any foam from the surface.
- Puree the soup in a blender, in batches if necessary; then pass the puree through a medium-mesh strainer, pressing on and discarding the solids. Return the soup to the pot to keep it warm.(**I did not do this step with my soup. I used an immersible hand blender and blended my soup without straining it which you can see in the picture below)
- Just before serving, stir in the chopped basil. Divide the soup among four bowls and serve it with the rolls.
I topped my soup off with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
Here is a link to the Panera website, http://mypanera.panerabread.com/. You can find lots of nice and easy recipes. If you live here in America, you can also sign up for their rewards program. From time to time I get a free lunch and not much is free these days!!Hope you're having a nice relaxing Sunday.
Rhodna
oh, now if you could just get a source for those asagio cheese croutons....mmmmm!!!! Thanks! ;-)
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