Made a new soup tonight that I am pretty proud of so I need to write it down and share it. It all started with Burgerville (local fast food chain and the best you'll ever find). Their signs all over town are advertising a "Fire Roasted Tomato Soup". It sounded so good I just had to try it. In my usual fashion, I went straight to the store to buy all of the ingredients that I thought would go in it. At home, I then had to find a recipe that sort of matched what I bought. I came across this recipe but didn't until just now realize it was a recipe for a sauce, not a soup.

Fire Roasted Tomato & Ancho Chile Sauce

(forgive me for not figuring out how to post the page, not the link)
http://localkitchenblog.com/2010/09/15/fire-roasted-tomato-ancho-chile-sauce/



Sounds lovely doesn't it? We are going to go back and revisit this in the summer when tomatoes aren't so bloody expensive.

Anyway, as usual things didn't go as planned so I improvised. The following is what I did and, following that, are notes for changes that I might make for the next time.

JULIA'S ROASTED TOMATO AND CHILI SOUP

about 10 Roma tomatoes
2 fresh pasilla chili peppers
2 fresh jalepeno peppers
2 onions
1 fresh garlic bulb
quart water
1 small can tomato paste
1 16 oz can diced tomatoes
oregano
chipotle chili hot sauce (to taste)
salt

Cut tomatoes in half and place meat side down on a foiled baking pan. Set oven to broil and put pan on top rack. Broil until tomato skins are black and tomatoes are juicy (10-15 minutes). When you take them out of oven, lay a towel over then to sweat the skins off.

Do the same with the peppers.

Reset oven to 375*. Cut onions in half and take off outer skins. Place face down on foiled baking pan. Do same with cloves of garlic. Bake 20 mins until tops are black and vegies are softish.

Peel everything and scrape seeds out of peppers. Puree tomatoes in blender and put in soup pot. Add water, tomato sauce and diced tomatoes. Blend 3 halves of the onion and garlic cloves to taste (we used all but the ones Jeanne ate). Do the same with the peppers. Taste frequently as adding jalepenos to control heat.

Dice remaining half of roasted onion and add to soup. (or as much as you have left after snacking on it).

Add sauce, oregano, salt and chipotle hot sauce to taste.

Reduce heat and simmer for a bit to mix flavors.

Serve with crusty or garlic bread. Makes 4-6 servings.

Now for my notes:

use whatever tomatoes are cheapest
I added the canned tomatoes and paste because the soup was too watered down after I adjusted the amount of puree from a sauce to a soup.
Save a few tomatoes to dice instead of pureeing them all.
experiment with using canned chipotle instead of fresh peppers. Will give the heat and smokiness without having to roast the peppers or buy the chipotle sauce. Or try reconsituting dried ancho chilis.