Creamy Tomato Soup

I do not like tomato soup. I love grilled cheese, but even grilled cheese cannot redeem tomato soup. And yet tomato soup was the second soup I decided to hazard in my vegetable soup-making quest. For one thing, the picture of "Italian Tomato Soup" in Ms. Forster's Soups book didn't look like Campbell's. It looked redder, and chunkier. And spicy! So I made the soup-- and it didn't look red, or chunky, or spicy. It looked like Campbell's. But it actually tasted heavenly! Especially when I added bottled artichokes the next day.

Creamy Tomato Soup

1 T olive oil
2 T butter
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped
6 tomatoes (2 lbs?), coarsely chopped
3 c chicken stock
1/2 c nonalcoholic white cooking wine
2 T tomato paste
1 T shreeded fresh basil
1 c heavy cream
salt
pepper

Heat oil and butter in pan until foaming. Add onion and saute 5 minutes, until softened but not brown. Stir in tomatoes and garlic, then add the stock, cooking wine, and tomato paste. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, lower heat, half-cover pan, and simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring now and then so that the tomatoes won't stick. Use an immersion blender to blend the soup somewhat. Add the heavy cream and heat through, stirring. Do not allow the soup to near a boil ever again. Adjust the seasoning and the consistency with stock, if desired.

Corn Soup

I made this soup a month or so ago to inaugurate my effort to learn to make vegetable soups. I had intended to make vegetarian soups, but I ended up using chicken stock in this and decided that vegetable soups would do. Back when I made this corn soup, fresh corn was abundant in the markets and very sweet and juicy and yummy. I really loved this soup. I hope to incorporate it into my repertoire in that hypothetical future where I have a repertoire. This is my adaptation of a recipe from a cookbook titled Soups, editted by Felicity Forster.

Corn Soup

2 T olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
6 earsworth of fresh corn kernels
3 c Chicken Stock
1 c heavy cream
salt
black pepper
1/2 red pepper, seeded and finely diced, to garnish

1. Heat oil in frying pan. Saute onion and pepper for about 5 minutes or until soft. Add the corn and saute for 2 minutes.

2. Use an immersion blender to blend somewhat the soup. Stir in the stock. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Gently stir in the cream. Serve the soup with diced red bell pepper sprinkled over. Do not allow the soup to boil ever again.