Week two: soup.  A Friday night and five of us.  First of the “who wants to eat at my house” emails and the little red kitchen filled up pretty quickly, which was nice.  I got this one from my folder of random recipes torn from magazines…an October 2008 issue of Chatelaine. Dead easy.  Roast a bunch of tomatoes, garlic, onion, sausage, zing it all together with a bit of chicken broth, poof: soup.

8 regular tomatoes

1 onion, preferably sweet

2 hot Italian sausages

1 head garlic

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tsp salt

2 tsp Italian seasoning

1/2 tsp smoked or regular paprika

10-oz (284 ml) can undiluted chicken broth

Sprigs of fresh thyme or basil (optional)

Arrange oven racks in top and bottom thirds of oven.  Preheat to 450 F.  Cut tomatoes and onion into wedges.  Slice sausages into quarters.  Discard loose skins from head of garlic.  Then slice off top, exposing cloves but leaving root end intact.  Tumble vegetables, sausage and garlic onto the two large rimmed baking sheets.  Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt, seasonings and paprika.  Stir.  Roast in top and bottom of oven until vegetables are lightly charred, 40 to 50 minutes.  Stir and rotate sheets halfway through roasting.

When roasted, place sausages on a cutting board and tomatoes and onions in a food processor.  You may have to do this in two batches.  Squeeze in garlic and discard skins.  Pour a little broth onto baking sheets.  Using a wooden spoon, scrape up and stir in any brown bits from the baking sheet.  Add to food processor.  Whirl until fairly smooth.  Pour into a saucepan along with the remaining broth.  Bring just to a boil.  Slice sausages and scatter overtop of soup along with fresh thyme.  It will keep well, covered and refrigerated, up to two days.

Many thumbs up.  Quick, and one of the tastiest soups I’ve ever made.  I managed to squeeze everything into two 9×13 pans on the same rack in the oven, with the garlic wrapped in a bit of foil drizzled in its own olive oil because I find the garlic is usually overdone by the time the veggies are charred the way they should be.  Used three sausages instead of two, next time if I’m feeling silly I’ll use four.  I didn’t muck around with the food processor business…I find one of those little hand-zinger type deals (see photo) is much easier for soups.  No transferring and less spills and cursing.  Mixed the sliced sausage in with the soup instead of sprinkled on top.  Couldn’t find any fresh thyme (oh, Sobey’s) and forgot the smoked paprika (too much wine).

Could make for vegetarians if you left out the sausage and used veg broth?  Would still be tasty I think.  One of those soups that would be better left in the fridge overnight and heated up the next day.  It fed five but just barely, so I’d double the batch if I was going to make it again to serve as a proper meal instead of a starter.  Served it with warm buttered cornbread.  This one’s a keeper…