Soup series 1: Tomato blue cheese
My soups are developing a bit of a cult following lately, which came as quite the surprise to me, let me just tell you. One of my most popular soups is tomato blue cheese, which (for various reasons) I make only a few times a year, when the stars are all in alignment. It is highly-anticipated and there is much celebration when I finally roll it. But despite all that, it’s startlingly easy to make — so much so that I always feel like I’m cheating. As with all of my soups, I generally make this about two gallons at a time; I’ll do my best to scale it down for home use, but several bits may be left as an exercise for the reader.
It begins, as do so many soups, with onions and garlic. You’re looking for a fine chop on the onion and a mince on the garlic — don’t purée it, fod pity’s sake. A good-sized home batch probably uses about one medium-sized yellow onion (spanish or vidalia) and half a bulb of garlic. Once they’re chopped, melt some butter in the pot you intend to use (it’s a one-pot soup, so this will look a bit foolish at first, with just the onions and garlic), and put the vegetables in to soften. Next you add the tomatoes — the best thing about tomato soups is that canned tomatoes are actually excellent for the purpose, so there’s no need to peel the goddamn things. What you’ll want here is about six cups of "peeled ground" tomatoes; other tomato products can be used if you want your soup chunkier or thinner (I don’t advise going thinner myself, but it will probably work going all the way down to tomato juice if that’s your thing. But your mileage may vary and all that). Once that’s added, let it heat over medium flame until it’s just beginning to steam (don’t boil it), and then add one quart of heavy cream. Pour the cream in slowly and whisk until it’s combined and it shouldn’t break; what to do if it does is beyond the scope of this article, but it’s something I’ll address shortly.
Once your soup is creamed you’re going to want to heat it slowly back up, stirring frequently. Again, make sure it doesn’t boil. As it heats, add salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and tabasco to taste — the tabasco is mainly for sympathetic flavour with the cream and cheese, and isn’t actually for making the soup spicy; if you’ve seasoned it properly, it shouldn’t have any heat to it at all. Since probably nobody knows what I’m talking about here, let’s just call it a teaspoon of tabasco and get on with it, yes? Yes. Good. Once the soup is hot again, you’ll add the cheese. Cheesey cheese. Yum. You’ll want a crumbled blue cheese of moderate quality for this; don’t get anything foolishly expensive and then melt it in the damn soup, but don’t get the blue-cap Easy Cheese and expect it to be awesome. Use your best judgment here. Regardless, add about a cup and a half of crumbles, stir until they’re melted in (you won’t see white bits floating in it anymore), and taste it. If it doesn’t have enough blue cheese "tang" to it, add a bit more. Once you’re happy with the cheesiness, hey, you’re done! It’s best to let this soup age for a half-hour or so on very low heat before eating it, but, hell, if you don’t want to wait it’ll be fine right out of the pot.
Variations:
The only major variation on this soup I tend to make involves adding mushrooms. For this much soup you’ll want about two quarts of raw, sliced mushrooms (whites or criminis should both work fine; if you want something more outré, hey, it’s your soup) added in with the onions and garlic at the beginning. And of course instead of just softening the vegetables you’ll want to let them sizzle until the mushrooms have stopped releasing liquid.
