All creatures great and small and tomato soup?

Morning everyone, it's the second of our two weeks challenges at Allsorts to take us through the holiday month. This time I hosting and my chosen theme is All Creatures Great and Small, so any domestic or wild creature but definitely no fantasy creatures or teddy bears! Prizes are an A 4 stamp set from AALL and Create and a £15 store voucher from WOWVOW.

Dominic Phillips dog stamp sets from AALL and Create were an immediate hit with me and I have made so many cards using them. Above the Lab from Canine Dreams, he's probably my favourite from the three Dog sets released. Simply stamped, stencilled sunray's, a sentiment from the set used for the card below and some little hearts and Mouse from another A&C set.

The Dachshund from Man's Best Friend, stamped ahed heat embossed with detail clear EP, the same sentiment again and stencilled stars.

Something out of the norm for me, I thought I would share my current favourite tomato soup recipe. We have two greenhouses so always have an abundance of them and this year one has just an Italian plum variety, very meaty and perfect for stuffing as well as soup and sauces. I've always used my Gran's recipe peeling them first and long slow cooking, the Italian way. Then recently I came across a couple of suggestions to use them as is, so devised my own version, might not be new to some but thought I would share:

Tomatoes, I rarely weigh anything but roughly 2 kg

4 cloves garlic

3 large onions (I use one red and two regular)

Handful sun dried tomatoes (ones in oil) roughly chopped

A few tbsp of the oil from above

Oregano (I use dried as it's doesn't grown well in our soil)

Fresh basil (we grown purple and green, dried is not a substitute)

Few fresh sage leaves

Olive oil and seasoning

Dessert spoon dark muscovado sugar (from my Gran's recipe)

Good slug white wine

2 tbs good balsamic

About 1-1.5 pints water or stock (can be adapted for vegan/veggies)

Chop onions and divide two thirds between two baking trays (the other 1/3 comes in later). Cut tomatoes into 2/4 pieces dependent on size, divide between the two trays. Do the same with the garlic. Sprinkle on the Oregano, seasoning and olive oil, mix well and put into oven at 200deg for about 3/4 hour, turning one or twice. Your after a slightly charred finish.

Meantime put the oil from the sun dried tomatoes into a large pan and fry off the rest of the chopped onion, when browned add the white wine to deglaze the pan. Remove tomatoes from oven and add to pan, add a little water to the baking pans to get all the caramelised edges and add along with all other ingredients. Simmer for about an hour, cool a little and use a stick blender which not only blends but the skins just disperses into the soup. Adjust seasoning to taste.

As you can see it's a really chunky consistency after cooking but blends down to a lovely soup and not a sign of any skin.

My first attempt ended up as a tomato sauce for meatballs as I didn't add any water/stock, it hadn't occurred to my that by roasting the tomatoes the liquid content had evaporated, but it did give a lovely thick sauce. So the method works for both sauce and soup. One of my Granddaughters used the recipe and added roasted peppers as well and said it was tasty.

Finally back to craft, several asked me about the card above which was one of Sunday's sneak peeks and the "floating" bells. I used this construction weight acetate which myself and the Highlight DT work with, it's significantly stronger than the usual available. Not the cheapest but you can get an extra 10% discount with my code on the sidebar. I tend to fold manually as I find it's dons't work as well using a scoreboard, I fold, use a bone folder then pull into shape.

Have a good weekend.

 

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