Tomato & Roasted Garlic Soup

Since the cooler weather blew in, I've been wanting to make some soup. I finally got up the courage (and time!) to try out this tomato soup recipe I've been eyeing.

Here's the setup:


First, you have to roast the garlic. I highly recommend doing this part on a day that no one will be coming over. I had to profusely apologize to our AT&T repairman today because the house reeked of garlic. Since this takes 40 minutes in a 400-degree oven, you could also just do it the day before to save time. Mmmmm......garlic.

After the garlic cools, you have to squeeze out the garlic cloves. This was a pretty messy affair for me. My fingers were a mess and I had to pick excess paper out of the garlic paste. Just an FYI. Maybe you'll do better than me.

To start the soup, I sauteed onions & celery in a little olive oil.

After the onions & celery were softened, I poured in stewed tomatoes (I used no salt added; took 5 cans), water and all of the spices.

Once this boiled, I let it simmer for 30 minutes. Now the fun part comes. The recipe says to puree the mixture with a hand blender. I don't have one of those, so I had to pour in the soup, bit by bit, into my blender. You can see what a mess I've already made from all the pouring.

At some point here, I've forgotten to close the pantry door. Cassius got a wild hair and decided to explore. (This is a first, by the way) Obviously, he's feeling MUCH better.

So after pureeing, this is what the yummy soup looks like with a little jalapeno jack cheese:

One mistake I made was using no salt added stewed tomatoes. The soup needed a little salt afterward, so keep that in mind. And now, here's the actual recipe:

Tomato & Roasted Garlic Soup
Ingredients:
1 head garlic
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil (I used more....)
Salt & Pepper
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
8 cups stewed tomatoes, including juice
1 bay leaf
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dried basil
1 cup water
1 tsp dried thyme

Directions:
~Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Remove loose, papery skins from garlic, leaving head intact. Cut half an inch off the top of the garlic. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt & pepper. Bake on center rack for 40 minutes until garlic has softened. Place on plate to cool. Once garlic has cooled, squeeze roasted garlic into a small bowl. The paste will be added to the soup.
~In large saucepan or Dutch oven, heat 1/2 teaspoon olive oil. Add onion and celery and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.
~Stir in tomatoes and juice, 1 cup of water and all seasonings. Bring to a boil.
~Reduce heat, add roasted garlic paste and simmer for 30 minutes.
~Puree with hand blender until mostly smooth.

Nutritional information per serving (makes 12 cups):
71 calories, 2g protein, 3g fat, 11g carbohydrates