We're making a tomato bisque.
We're gonna start right here with crouton.
So in this pan, I have a combination of olive oil
and a dab of butter.
You could use all olive oil
or whatever oil of your preference
with two crushed cloves of garlic
and I'm going to toss some stale bread.
I make about four cups because I find that my husband
and when we could all be in the same house,
my mother and my sister would always steal the croutons.
And I add this combo of pecorino and Parm.
So we're going to toss this all together
and I just use the skillet to melt the butter
into the really good olive oil and get an even coat, right,
and then I turn this off and while it's warm,
I'm gonna douse it with cheese
like these are cheese croutons.
Onto the pan it goes and into the oven
until it's deeply nutty and fragrant and looking good.
So nice and toasty.
I have the rack at center and the oven's on about 350.
For our soup, we're gonna start with fennel, carrot, onion.
Now we're gonna start with this and we're going to sweat it.
What does that mean?
That means to draw out all of the natural liquids,
flavor and juices from the vegetables without browning them.
They're just drawing out their flavor.
So we're going to add salt, kosher salt for me
or fine sea salt would work here.
Give it a stir.
This is over moderate heat with just olive oil.
And now we're ready to add for vegetarian preparation,
our Calabrian chili paste which is surprisingly mild.
I think that this tastes milder than this
but my family loves heat.
So I use a little more of Calabrian chili paste.
I would put a tablespoon in of this
and if you're just using red chili flake,
I would use a teaspoon.
I'm using two ounces of 'nduja.
'Nduja is one of John's favorite ingredients
and it is, whoops, well, I'll get you in a second.
'Nduja is a salami paste.
So we melt that in and that's our heat
and certainly adds to the salt and the depth of flavor
and the smoky flavor in our dish as well
and now we're going to stir in our garlic.
We didn't put the garlic in at the beginning.
Even though we were cooking low and slow,
it probably would have been fine
but just to make sure that the garlic doesn't bitter,
I'm adding it a bit later here.
Now we're going to add in as I explained earlier
one large can of crushed or diced fire roasted tomato,
half a bottle or so, about a cup, cup and a half
or one can if you're using a canned product of tomato sauce
or I'm using passata which is made from fresh tomatoes
and you see how thick that is, right?
So now we're gonna add in as much as our vessel allows
so we can thin this out to be a rich soup
of vegetable or chicken stock
giving a smidge of error room there
'cause we're going to put an immersion blender in there.
So this is our smoky tomato bisque.
You do not have to turn it into a bisque.
It's delicious as soup.
You can make it vegetarian or with 'nduja as we did today
and I added a little basil.
We have our cheesy crouton for the top
that may be a little overcooked for you
but pretty good luck for me
since I usually set bread on fire
and John didn't remind me to take them out.
So now, I did switch to a larger pot.
Did you notice?
And here we go.
Oh, look at that, delicious.
Wow, you can really smell that sweet and smoky combination
of the fennel and the fire roasted tomatoes.
Delightful.
Up on top, these crunchy little croutons here
and make it like little garlic, cheesy toast
to mix into the soup.