Sunday's Soup

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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)
4. 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