Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Moroccan Tomato Soup

Recipe #103: http://www.canadianliving.com/food/moroccan_tomato_soup.php

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Did you miss me? Life fell apart a while ago and I fell off the blogsphere for a while. Suffice it to say, among other major changes, I'm now cooking for one.

But enough about my chaos.

Now that I get to make all of the decisions about what to cook, I'm trying some new recipes. I'm attempting to eat more meat and dark leafy greens to keep my iron stores up as well as eat more vegetables in a generally healthier eating setting. We are not going to discuss my recent out-of-control potato chip overdoses.

I found this recipe while looking for a Fall squash one... and there is no squash in this one... but I digress.

What prompted me to try this soup is the number of spices in my collection that I got to use. I also had most of the ingredients already. And peanut butter! I've never made peanut butter soup before. Have you? I don't eat a lot of ethnic food (I'm working on that) and I don't know any Moroccan person to ask if they eat a lot of peanut butter in their soups, but I'm operating on the assumption that it's legit in this case. If not, I blame Canadian Living for shoddy research/marketing. Recipe helpfully states that it makes 6 servings of an unknown quantity so I measured it out because I'm a detail person - 1 cup is a serving.

For this recipe, I used a can of store brand diced tomatoes that came with herbs and spices. My little can of tomato paste by Hunts also came with herbs and spices. My dry spice measurements may not have been exact. The stress of this year has my hands with a fine tremor most days so I likely over-measured slightly. I gave the cinnamon a big pinch. Awwwww, cinnamon, you're so cute, cute, cute! ... I used Kraft Natural peanut butter (no jelly this time)  and because I am still impatient, the slow cooker was on HIGH, not LOW as directed, for about 4 hours with random stirring when I remembered. I don't own an immersion blender so I chucked everything (in small batches) into my regular blender - first puree, then blend.

For best results, the entire recipe was made with "Go - The Very Best of Moby" album playing in the background.
Mangia! Mangia!
Speaking of results, SCORE! Once you get past the ugly orange colour (ironic if you know my birthday), this soup is DELICIOUS! I topped mine with 1/2 tsp of unsalted sunflower seeds that I found in the cupboard. The peanut butter flavour is nicely blended with the tomato and spices. The soup goes down smoothly and leaves a trail of manageable fire from mouth to belly. Goodbye, House of Bland! This baby has some kick. I look forward to having more for breakfast tomorrow. Maybe it'll wake me better than coffee at 0500.