I apologize for this late post. I’m actually a little embarrassed. I had this great idea for this week’s post which was all about tomatoes, and on Thursday I found the perfect tomato recipe, made it, took all the pictures and my husband told me it tasted like dishwater, soap to be exact! I’ve been hoping to redeem my cooking prowess but my schedule hasn’t allowed, so here’s my tomato story in all it’s glory…just take my advice and follow the recipe closer than I did! And I will add that when I threw in more salt and pepper he said it was pretty good!
Summer is a thing of the past and fall has arrived. While there are new things in the garden like pumpkins and squash sprouting up, some summer favorites are seeing their last days. So take advantage of the last bumper crop of tomatoes, any tomatoes…green, small, large, bruised, whatever you can get your hands on and think preserving or, if you’re as excited for crisp fall weather as I am, think about warming up to a nice bowl of tomato bisque. I found this recipe on a favorite blog site of mine called Riddle Love (http://www.riddlelove.com/2011/10/creamy-tomato-bisque-recipe-using-fresh.html?m=1). It’s by another mom who gets it: this do-over that America seems to be gravitating toward with our food and traditions. The recipe is great but like I said, my ability to follow directions, not so much. It was all going well until I decided to deviate from her instructions to use a blender by using my brand new tomato mill.
tomato mill
I was channeling my inner Alice Waters who doesn’t believe in electrical appliances (she doesn’t even have a microwave in her home kitchen and cooks mostly by open flame…a girl can dream, can’t I?) , so I skipped Riddle Love’s recommendation to blend the tomatoes and use a sieve and I hand cranked the tomatoes through my brand new Williams-Sonoma, made-in-Italy, I-must-have-to-have-this-right?! tomato press. I believe she ended up with 8 cups of tomato puree for her bisque, and I may be exaggerating to say I yielded 2 cups of juice.
soup's on
But I digress, I followed the rest of the directions pretty closely until the end, when it called for an immersion blender…I don’t have an immersion blender, and the bigger question at hand is what would Alice Waters do?! Can I revert back to my electrical ways (a gas stove doesn’t count does it?). Being that this dinner prep was getting a little long in the tooth, I gave in and threw each individual bowl-full of soup into the blender.
With a little basil, the bowls of soup looked so yummy with the grilled cheese sandwich slices. I ignored the fact that tomato bisque is supposed to be red, not white and put my masterpiece on the table for the family to enjoy. And if we could judge a book by it’s cover, all would have been right in the world this night.
should tomato bisque be white?
But alas, my husband said my soup tasted like dishwater and he heated up the enchiladas from the night before. Of course, I was at first offended…I just milled tomatoes fresh from the farmers market, don’t I get an automatic A for effort!…Until I tried the soup myself. I’m positive my cheeks were more red than the bisque; I laughed, but mostly because I had taken myself so seriously when all we both really wanted was something wholesome, filling, warm and that didn’t taste like Dawn. Eating “Slow” isn’t a science, it’s not always perfect, it’s not always possible. Our nation is new in comparison to most other countries worldwide and as a nation we are trying to find and define our food culture with all the criticisms of the world looking on. A daunting task, yet undeniably important because we all want and need to eat! We have had some hangups along the way (cheese whiz anyone?), but as we keep at this, if we can laugh as we go, it will make this journey all the more worthwhile.
Happy eating everyone!