Tomato Sauce/Bisque Soup Base
Because Spring's Sprung, and garden tomatoes are on the way!
You can use this as tomato soup or bisque, you can make vegetable soup of it, pour it over pasta or bean or rice, as a casserole base? whatever you need. It also freezes quite well.
Okay! What you?ll need is:
Tomatoes! Don?t just grab a few pounds from the grocery store, most tomatoes you find in the grocery have been bred to ripen off of the vine and to store well. They have thick skins, tend to be pithy and tasteless, and only give a small fraction of tomatoey-ness.
Canned tomatoes often actually have better flavor, but they?re also often loaded with salt, and can still be pithy.
So, grow them, make friends with a gardener, find the farmer?s market, or go to the organic section.
You want at least a pound of Roma type tomatoes. These are usually oblong, they are meaty rather than gooey-seedy, and are the go-to for making tomato paste.
But don?t stop there.
Now pick up a carton of cherry type tomatoes, any sort but the ?tastes like a grape!? variety. Yellow pear tomatoes are good.
Now get at least a pound each of at least two other types, heirloom if they have them. The ?black? tomatoes (Prince, Crim, Cherokee) are excellent for this. Or get Hillbilly, Mr. Stripey, Mortgage Lifter, whatever they have.
Since you?re buying your veggies (or raiding your neighbor?s garden), go ahead and grab a good head of garlic or three. There?s several sorts, we?re all used to the grocery store white. Go ahead and try any others that may be offered, they all have their own interesting flavor variations which love tomato.
Grab some sweet peppers, but don?t settle for the somewhat bitter-sweet green Bell. Try the cherry sweets, Marconis, banana, Gypsy, etc - ask if you?re not sure if they?re sweet! You?ll want about a pound of these, mix and match, why not?
Go grab your onions, another pound or so worth, purple or yellow or white. A good strong flavored one will stand up to the sauce better, I usually go with purple or yellow.
Now start fondling the herbs. You may want sweet or opal basil, or you might want oregano. Don?t do both, it?ll be too much. Tarragon for a more ?French? leaning sauce, Cilantro for a more ?Mexican? leaning sauce. Lemongrass or lemon rind for a little citrus zing, if you like. (Or, you can add those later to personalize the sauce to the dinner.)
Black peppercorns, of course, and salt.
Is anyone selling fresh pressed olive oil? Grab that stuff. Now bag up your boodle and head home.
You should have:
1 lbs Roma type tomatoes.
3 lbs mixed type tomatoes
1 carton of cherry-type tomatoes.
-Chop all of the tomatoes, skin and all.
1 good sized head of garlic (more or less), minced.
1 lbs chopped onion
1-2 lbs of chopped peppers
1/4 cup (more or less) of the fresh chopped herbs (MUCH less if dried, like, a tablespoon).
Salt and pepper to taste.
Olive oil
2 or more cups of vegetable or chicken stock, made rather rich.
Get a good cast iron skillet and drizzle it in the olive oil, get it hot. Now add into that the chopped onion, fry until the onion is getting transparent. Now add the garlic, and when it?s transparent, remove from the heat, dump it into a large steel or enamel ware pot.
A little more olive oil into the skillet, and give the peppers a good fry up, till they?re about half cooked. OR? Oil a gridiron and give the peppers a nice grilling before chopping them up. Into the pot with them!
Add the tomatoes to the pot, and inhale. Yum! Now pour over the stock (or add water) to cover the entire pile of deliciousness. Turn the heat to as low as can be, or use a crock pot, and leave it to simmer. Stir now and then.
Now, after it?s simmered down into a lovely mess of veg, you can start adding the herbs. Bay leaf, though, you want to put in earlier, if used. You can also add wine, use real wine that you drink, cooking wine is salty stuff.
Basically taste and adjust. Too sweet? Try some lemon rind, vinegar, or a spoon of canned tomato paste to fix. Too sour? A spoonful of brown sugar, sweet paprika, even a grated carrot will help.
Turn the heat up a bit and reduce it to the thickness you want, giving the herbs and such about an hour or so to blend in.
Speaking of blenders? have one! Because next, you start ladling the soup into a food processor of some sort and puree. (You don?t have to, this just makes it easier if you?re making bisque or sauce).
And now stand back and admire the usually odd red colored sauce you have created! You can just drink it, you can put it into containers to freeze, you can add milk or cream to it, you can pour it over noodles, you?re good.
