Sunday, August 23, 2009

Yellow Tomato Soup

I have one tomato plant in my backyard garden and it is a monster. I have never seen such a fat, full, tall plant. I can't get my hands around it anymore. I've tied it up with pantyhose several times, but the hose must droop after a while. The five foot tall plant has plenty of big tomatoes, and all will ripen at about the same time. Hence the question, what to do with a large crop of tomatoes?

About ten years ago, while living in Hawaii, I ran across a recipe for yellow tomato soup. Believe it or not, it's hard to find some produce there and the produce available, in general, is very expensive. Fresh yellow tomatoes were out of the question, but I had to try the recipe so I used two cans of yellow tomatoes instead.

I've made a major adjustment to the original recipe, which sauted the onions and bacon together. I found that the bacon did not get crisp that way, due to the moisture in the onions. Also, the original recipe had you puree the uncrisp bacon in with all the other ingredients, which produced a very fatty texture in the soup. So here's how I'm doing it using my garden tomatoes, which are actually orange, not yellow, but so what.

In a large Dutch oven, saute 6 slices of bacon, chopped, until nice and crisp. Remove the bacon and drain on paper towels. Leaving only 2-3 tablespoons of bacon drippings in the pot, add one large, diced onion and saute until the onion is tender and starting to brown, about 15 minutes. Add 2 pounds of chopped yellow or orange tomatoes (4-5 large) and 2 cloves of minced garlic and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes. Add one-half cup of sherry and one-half cup of dry white wine. Simmer 5 minutes then add 4 cups of chicken broth. Simmer mixture for 15 minutes. Stir in 1 canned chipotle chili in adobo, minced, and 1 tablespoon of dried oregano. Puree the soup with an immersion blender or in a food processor. Stir in one-half cup of heavy cream and heat through. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with crumbled bacon on top.

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