Cookbook Club – Everything I Want to Eat

For December’s Cookbook Club, we used Everything I Want to Eat by Jessica Koslow. I made the Charred Tomato Soup with Mint and Croutons. You can see everything we did eat on my Cookbook Club site. For now – my dish!

There’s something about tomato soup that sounds so good in winter. I’d never made my own tomato soup before, but this recipe looked pretty straightforward, so I decided to give it a try. It also noted that this tomato soup is good hot or cold, which made it a good choice for bringing to Cookbook Club.

I tore bread into crouton-size pieces, drizzled with olive oil, seasoned with salt, and baked until crisp on the outside and chewy inside.

I removed the stems from tomatoes and sliced them in half, then seared them in olive oil until lightly charred in a few places.

I put vinegar, mint leaves, and salt into a blender, letting the salt dissolve.

Then I added the charred tomatoes and their pan juices to the blender.

I blended on low speed to break up the tomatoes, increased to medium speed while adding olive oil, then blended on high speed for one more minute.

The recipe then called for straining the soup in a milk-nut bag. But it did note that if you like a little texture in your soup, you can choose not to strain it. I chose not to, perhaps more out of laziness than for texture reasons. So the soup went straight into a bowl, garnished with croutons and a bit more mint.

Of course I tasted it warm right out of the blender. It was a warming winter treat. But Jessica Koslow was right – it was also quite good cold by the time we ate it at Cookbook Club. Only a handful of ingredients and very tasty… I’d make it again.