Rebecca B
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I made this soup yesterday and served it for dinner with a chicken Caesar salad and a nice riesling. I made modifications to the recipe to better suit my ingredients on hand, and to adjust the recipe to my palate.
1.) I roasted 2 heads of garlic and one diced yellow bell pepper with the cherry tomatoes.
2.) I added the basil leaves to the roasted vegetables just 5 minutes before removing the tomatoes from the oven to make them crisp without burning. I used globe basil -- perhaps other varieties of basil are less prone to scorching?
3.) I could not find San Marzano tomatoes on my store shelf. I used Muir Glen organic fire roasted tomatoes (which, unfortunately, contain citric acid -- but are about the best that I can find locally. Otherwise, I would need to special order my canned tomatoes.) I added a small amount of fresh squeezed orange juice to “make up” for this deficiency.
4.) I used dark chicken stock for the base of this soup, which added a nice richness to the flavor profile.
5.) For some reason, the tomatoes took about 45 minutes roasting time, rather than the 30 minutes the recipe suggested to caramelize in my oven at 350 degrees F.
Overall, I am very pleased with this soup recipe because it is an end of harvest “problem solver”. I will most definitely make multiple batches of this soup at the end of the season using my own grill roasted Roma tomatoes, and freeze for use in winter.
Suggestions: I would double the amount of roasted basil leaves the next time I make this soup. (The roasting calms the flavor of the basil, but looks so beautiful in the finished soup.) Personally, I did not like the texture of basil stems (even finely chopped and sautéed) in my soup. I will omit the basil stems the next time I make this. I will also use both red and orange cherry tomatoes to brighten the color of the soup. Next time I will try a little bit of smoked gouda as a topping for this soup.
Thank you Kimberly, for such a great soup idea.
