Tomatoes Continued.......

We've been on a quest since just before the 1st of September to keep on top of our tomatoes from the garden so we've been eating tomatoes in some form pretty much every single day, sometimes twice a day. So, my blog may be seeing red for a while longer. Here are two soups we've made with our tomato harvest - one cold and one hot.

I've already blogged about one tomato soup - it's a standby favorite, but I'm always up for trying something new. This soup, a Tyler Florence recipe, came to me via a recommendation on the CLBB. It was just enough different from the Jack Bishop recipe that I adore that I thought it was worth a try. I also like the way Tyler encourages the use of just about any kind of tomato.

The tomatoes, onion and garlic are ready to be roasted.

One thing I'd like to point out on this recipe is that it does not call for peeling the tomatoes. I tried it without peeling them and then I simply pureed the soup in a blender to see if I could get the skins to blend in. While the skins did blend in for the most part, there were enough left that I felt the need to strain the soup - something I am pretty loathe to do. I do not aspire to perfectly smooth soups - rustic is just fine with me - but I really don't care for things like tomato skins which tend to be hard to chew and are just generally not pleasing. Next time I would remove the skins before (or even after) roasting.

Roasted Tomato Soup

While the soup was very good, I still like the Jack Bishop recipe better. I wasn't thrilled with the addition of chicken stock - if I'm going to serve tomato soup, I'd prefer it to be vegetarian and there's just something not quite right about the thought of chicken flavor permeating a nice tomato soup - it's simply unnecessary. Of course it would be simple enough to sub in some vegetable stock, but I wanted to try the recipe as written to see if anything was gained by using chicken stock. I'll stick with Jack for now.

I've talked about this next recipe before. It's basically a run of the mill gazpacho but I like the added kick of a bit of hot sauce and sometimes even a dash of Worcestershire sauce. I think I made it for the wrong crowd though - I had to keep the onions and the peppers separate! Gazpacho is always a refreshing - and healthful - no-cook summer treat.

Gazpacho

The forecast is calling for patch frost tonight so I am off to pick as many tomatoes as are ready and to cover the rest. It looks like only one night of frosty temps, so I'm going to try to help my garden limp a long a little while longer..........