Its Friday So It Must Be Soup! March 4 Tomato Tomahto

As soon as I saw this soup on Suzie The Foodie's blog, I knew it would be my soup this week. The original recipe is found here on food network canada. I changed it a tiny bit but it was pretty good as is. She instructs you to add fresh basil to the soup when you serve it, which would be great too but I had some chimichurri left from my roast chicken and so I used that instead and it was really great. The vinegar in the chimichurri added a really nice tang to the soup.

8 plum tomatoes, seeded and cut in half
2 red peppers, seeded and cut into big chunks
1 onion, peeled and quartered
3 cloves of garlic
4 tbls olive oil in total
2 tbls balsamic
kosher salt and fresh pepper
3 tbls tomato paste
5 cups of chicken stock
chimichurri

Preheat the oven to 400F and line a baking tray with parchment paper. Toss the tomatoes, peppers, onion, garlic in 2 tbls olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Place all of that , skin side up, on the baking tray and roast for 45 minutes.

In your soup pot, heat up the second 2 tbls of olive oil and add the tomato paste. Fry it in the olive oil for a few minutes before adding the the tomatoes, peppers, onions and garlic as well as all juices that are in the baking pan. Stir to combine and then pour in the chicken stock, bring to a boil and then reduce the heat to med low and let simmer for 20 minutes. Either transfer the soup to a blender OR use an immersion blender to puree the soup.

Ladle the soup into serving bowls and then either dot or swirl in about a tbls of chimichurri for each bowl.

I loved this soup. The red peppers gave it a nice taste and it was just a bit smoky. I used less liquid and less tomato paste than the original recipe called for and I think it was a good idea. It was already a pretty thin soup and I didn't want it any thinner. We had it with grilled brie/havarti/ham sandwiches on german bread (roggenbrot)

As spring starts to approach, at least in my head, I will eventually stop my Friday soups until fall because  I don't eat nearly as much soup once it starts to warm up. Soon it will be all about grilling and yummy room temperature dishes and apart from corn chowder at the end of the summer, our soup days will be numbered.