Can I just start by saying that I am so grateful to have food to eat- that's no small thing considering the state of the world these days. I am truly blessed. But the comedy factor on my soup making today was too high not to share. :)
After a few hints from friends yesterday I decided to actually try to properly cook something for lunch today. I can cook several sorts of things very well- chili, borscht, various Scottish foods, and some Chinese dishes. Unfortunately everything that I like to cook takes ages of preparation...worth it in the end if you have 2 hours to spend chopping etc. Which I don't- so I usually end up eating fried noodles, or a sandwich...ok ok and sometimes I just go for a piece of cheese or shortbread. I've a very kind friend who this past week has been suggesting easy recipes for me, but my memory for things I've heard is awful- all that has stuck of these many easy recipes was the inspiration to try
cooking something easy... and that at least one easy thing was stuffed bell peppers...but what I remembered of the recipe was: "Cut the peppers in half...something...something else...then take them out of the oven when they're a little crunchy if you like them crunchier." Great... well that's obviously not enough to cook stuffed peppers- after all, what are they supposed to be stuffed with? Absolutely no idea!
The only thing I know how to cook fast is grilled cheese sandwiches- I know a fantastic recipe for them that involves grating the cheese, putting nice mustard on the bread, and adding a bit of pepper to the cheese before grilling. Fantastic- I can do that in my sleep. But grilled cheese begs for tomato soup, and canned tomato soup isn't very tasty...let's just say it's not my favorite. I usually make my own tomato soup- it costs about the same- but I can never seem to find the recipe that I used "that one time a long long time ago when it actually tasted good" so I have to resort to trolling the web. I thought I'd found a reasonable recipe- for posterity here it is:
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Time: 40 min
Difficultly level: easy
* 1 (14-ounce) can chopped tomatoes
* 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper
* 1 stalk celery, diced
* 1 small carrot, diced
* 1 yellow onion, diced
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 cup chicken broth
* 1 bay leaf
* 2 tablespoons butter
* 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
* 1/2 cup heavy cream, optional
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Strain the chopped canned tomatoes, reserving the juices, and spread onto a baking sheet, season with salt and pepper, to taste, drizzle with 1/4 cup of the olive oil and roast until caramelized, about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a saucepan, heat remaining olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the celery, carrot, onion and garlic, cook until softened, about 10 minutes. Add the roasted chopped canned tomatoes, reserved tomato juices, chicken broth, bay leaf and butter. Simmer until vegetables are very tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Add basil and cream, if using. Puree with a hand held immersion blender until smooth.
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Let me just walk you through why this is the tomato soup recipe of doom. While I do that, feel free to wonder how on earth I managed to choose this recipe of all the millions on the web.
First, let's look at the ingredients...canned tomatoes- fine, no worries, I have about 8
cans in the cupboard for my next borscht or chili cookoff. Salt, pepper, yeah yeah everything has that in it...Olive oil- uh, 3/4 cup seems like a lot- what is that, like 6 oz? Hmm, well I don't have a good idea about this stuff, so I guess it won't really matter. 1 stalk celery- no way, I hate celery! Leaving that out. Skip the carrot too- cooked carrots are nasty, especially cooked in a soup. Blech! Onion, garlic, ok, chicken broth ok, bay leaf? Who has those? Besides they taste nasty anyway-skip that. Butter? Uh, maybe it's for putting on bread to go with it? Basil leaves...yummm....heavy cream- must be to
reduce the acidity. No worries. Moving on...now what do I do with this stuff again?
"Strain the tomatoes, put them on a baking sheet, roast them"...oops, I already put the whole can into the pot. Crap- well I'll just have to strain them. Roast tomatoes sounds pretty good actually. Alas, I don't have a baking sheet, how about a pie tin? Shouldn't make much difference, the oven is all the same heat. Ok strained (well mostly strained- canned tomatoes are awfully runny...guess it evaporates?)
(Thus began my tomato soup recipe of doom. And it gets better- just you wait)
Oh, I was supposed to "put 1/4 cup of the oil on the tomatoes"-whoops, I'll just pour some on while it's in the oven, those stupid pans are hard to get out, and there's a metal rack above it I can pour it through. Now to get to the soup part- wait, "carmelised?" I've seen carmelised onions, I know how to do that- what the heck does a"carmelised tomato" look like anyway? Crap... this isn't good.
(What do you reckon my chances of making something good tasting are at this point? I'd say not better than 50/50.)
Moving on-"heat remaining olive oil, chop the onions and fry them with the garlic." Hold up- you want me to fry 1 onion and 2 cloves of chopped garlic in 1/2 CUP of oil?! I don't think so! I'll just put in enough to actually fry them, not drown them. Yeesh... It's been 20 minutes, those tomatoes should be roasted...hmm, they look just like warmed up oily tomatoes...isn't something different supposed to happen to them? Wow, I just wasted 20 minutes waiting for tomatoes to heat up in the oven?! Great- well dump them in along with the broth. Hmm maybe it's not too bad- it smells pretty good. Better taste it...BLECH!!!! This tastes like oily salty tomato! GROSS!!!
(At this point I gave up waiting for the food, made a cup of tea and started eating shortbread)
What the heck am I supposed to do next? "...and butter." Uh, just HOW is butter going to help this exactly?! And add cream at the end? Hmm...butter is NOT going into this soup- it's oily enough as it is. And that just sounds nasty. Is the next step going to fix this?! "Simmer until vegetables are tender" blah blah I don't have veggies...oh crap- "puree with a hand held immersion blender?!" You have got to be joking- I have no idea what that is! And I don't want pureed soup- I want mine to have chunks of tomatoes in it. Plus I don't have a blender...oh no... why oh why didn’t I notice it said “blend” before now?!! This recipe is meant to be blended! ARGH!!
(Trying to think of something to bail this one out, because I have to eat this mess)
Essentially I had inadvertently chosen a recipe for pureed vegetable soup, masquerading itself as tomato soup, and what I wanted was just tomato soup with big pieces of tomato. I missed the blender part as it was below the level I had scrolled to. What I had was very very oily, very very salty tomato-ish something, with onions in it. I wasted 20 minutes putting tomatoes in the oven, when apparently they were expecting them to be broiled (why did it say roast? We put "roasts" in the oven, we "roast" meat in the oven- why didn't they say broiled?) I also wasted an hour of my life on this entire fiasco. Anyway I couldn't bear to toss food, so I thought I'd try skimming the oil off the top to make it more palatable. So I skimmed off oil+"soup" until I couldn't see any big oil bits- over a quarter of a cup worth. And since it couldn't get much worse, I thought I'd try adding the cream...the cream did help. In the end, we had lovely grilled cheese sandwiches with creamy, salty, slightly less oily but still really oily tomato+onion concoction.
My tomato soup of DOOM!!! experience over with, all that was left to do was clean up the dishes and write to warn unsuspecting strangers about the dangers of looking up recipes on the web. Dear friend, as you may have heard, the web can be a dangerous place- be wary of recipes masquerading as something you think you want to make, when really they aren't what you thought they were! And always ALWAYS be sure to scroll down!
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