Mmmm...soup

We've had a few cool (Local meteorologists would use frigid or bone-chilling, but I'm from the midwest. 50 degrees is not bone-chilling.) and rainy days recently in San Diego and I couldn't be happier. I love a rainy day when I get to spend it in the kitchen. I guess I find it very comforting to have something simmering on the stove or roasting in the oven. So I took advantage of one of these rainy days and made one of my favorites...roasted-tomato basil soup. I based the recipe on Ina Garten's recipe in her book, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. I say "based" because I rarely follow a recipe exactly. I hate to measure! I prefer to taste a dish throughout the cooking process and add or delete ingredients based on my mood, the person I am cooking it for, and what's in (or not in) my refrigerator that day. Anyway...what I like best about Ina Garten's recipe is how the tomatoes are roasted for 45 minutes to intensify their flavour. This effectively turns soso winter tomatoes into something really tasty. Once the tomatoes come out of the oven, I add them to saute'd onions and garlic, some additional canned tomatoes, red pepper flakes, fresh basil and thyme, and home-made chicken stock (which I made on another rainy day). The soup then simmers for at least another 45 minutes and can then be served warm or cold. (I prefer warm.) In Ina Garten's recipe, she passes the soup through a food mill before serving. I have a very small kitchen so I don't have room for a food mill. I have used a hand-held immersion blender in the past and that has worked well. On this particular day, I simply left the soup chunky, and I enjoyed the texture very much. Another time I made the soup, I added vodka while it was simmering. The alcohol mostly cooked off and could not be tasted, but it helped to intensify the other flavours in the dish. To further put the soup over the top, I added a bit of cream right before serving. It was kind of like a vodka-tomato sauce for pasta, only in soup form. Whatever version of this soup I make, I always garnish it the same... with more fresh basil and some shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese... Delicious!

Just a bite...

I have a couple quick, easy,and elegant appetizers for you to try today. The first one starts with a sliced English cucumber. Next, add a spoonful of hummus. (Although a food processor makes hummus easy to make, go ahead and just buy it from the store, whatever flavour sounds good to you.) Then garnish with half-moons of thinly sliced radish and you're home free. Italian parsley leaves dress up the platter, but they aren't really necessary. The second appetizer starts with endive leaves that have been separated. I then added a spoonful of crab salad (Again, you can just buy a little crab salad from the deli counter. No one has to know you didn't make it yourself.). Top each with a slice of radish and garnish the platter with chives. If you decide to make both appetizers for the same occasion, I recommend using separate platters. Just my opinion, but I think Martha would agree.

Say "Cheese!"

Earlier this year, my friend, Leigh came over to do my first (and last?) photo shoot. Leigh and I first met over five years ago when she was a therapist and I was a teacher at a school for severely emotionally disabled kids. She had just moved to San Diego from Kansas and I had just moved from Holland, Michigan. Fast forward to present time and she now has her own photography business (Check out her amazing work at www.leighmillerphotography.com.) and I now have my own personal chef company, Flavour. We had a lot of fun the afternoon of the photo shoot...cooking, posing, staging, drinking (Photo shoots make me nervous!), and EATING. By the end of the afternoon, Leigh had taken over 400 pictures. The following is a sampling of our efforts...Enjoy! And thanks again Leigh! Let me know when you want some more tiramisu!