My favorite tomato soup is Saturn Cafe's tomato soup
. If you are from Santa Cruz, you know what I'm talking about. It's slightly creamy, smooth and yet a bit chunky, with a nice sprinkling of dill. This soup is addictive.I have a confession to make. When I was in college in Tucson Arizona, far away from my beloved Saturn Cafe tomato soup, my roommate, Christina, and I would try to recreate the Saturn Soup. We tried and we tried, and we came up with some delicious tomato soup's along the way, but we never quite mastered the Saturn Cafe tomato soup recipe.
Moving on... At the Farmer's Market this morning I picked up a bunch of beautiful ripe tomatoes. I'm not going to try and recreate Saturn's Soup, but instead create my own delicious tomato dill soup. My Mom recently gave me my first Le Creuset pot. Hallelujah. I've basically tried to cook every meal in it. I love it. I officially became slightly obsessed with Le Creuset cookware when I was at JenO's house and we used her Le Cresuset pots to make a fantastic 7 course meal. I think we made roasted tomato soup that night too. Thanks a lot JenO for giving me expensive taste in cookware!
I decided to roast my tomato's in the Le Creuset, to give the soup a little smoky flavor. Roasting is great because it lets out yummy juices, the soup practically makes itself, you hardly have to add any other liquid. I wanted to make this soup non-dairy. If you choose to use veggie broth instead of chicken broth, this could be a vegan soup.
Roasted Tomato Dill Soup
Ingredients
* approximate. I never really measure, this is my best guest. Play around with the broth...add a little at a time until you reach the consistency you want.
12 small tomatoes
1 red bell pepper
1 shallot
1/2 cups Chicken broth
1/8 cup olive oil
1/3 or more fresh dill, chopped
a few dashes of paprika
salt
pepper
Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Cut stems off tomato's and slice in half. Slice the red pepper in half and scoop out seeds. Toss the tomato's and peppers in olive oil, salt, & pepper.
Oil the bottom of the roasting pot.
Place the tomato's & red pepper, flesh side down, in a roasting pan or pot.
Roast for 20 minutes, add shallots, and continue roasting for 25 more minutes.
Add small amount of chicken broth to the roasted tomato & red pepper at a time and blend with an immersion blender. If you don't' have an immersion blender, you could place all the ingredients in a blender, but be sure to add all the juices from the roasting pan or pot. OR if you want a chunkier soup, remove the skin off tomatoes and peppers then mash the tomatoes with a masher. Continue to add broth until you reach the desired consistency.
Add chopped dill and stir in. Add paprika, salt & pepper to taste.
***Yum. This soup basically ROCKED. Mike described it as "clean & fresh." The red pepper gives tomato soup and interesting kick.
I served the soup with Farmer's Market artichokes & a yogurt, lemon, dill dipping sauce. Sounds like a strange mix, I know, but the dill in the soup & in the dipping sauce really tied the meal together.I am quite happy with this meal. :)
