tomato soup with two fennels

I am having a bit of a moment with A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg.

Before The Never-Ending Flu of 2015 struck a couple weeks ago, I made espresso-walnut toffee, stewed prunes with citrus and cinnamon, and fennel salad with Asian pear and Parmesan.*

Now, A Homemade Life is due back at the library and I'm finally getting over The Never-Ending Flu of 2015, so I thought I could sneak in one more recipe before returning it – and before I go out and buy the book. (I am very strict about not buying cookbooks until I've a taken them out of the library at least three times. I'm ready to commit.)

I thought a pot of soup would be good to have on hand this week, and the Italian store has been wooing me with its cheap, fresh fennel bulbs. So I pulled out a couple cans of San Marzano tomatoes, and set about making Sunday lunch.

This soup has two fennels – those luminous crisp bulbs and crunchy little fennel seeds. It makes for a hearty soup, especially considering it could be vegan if you use water instead of chicken broth. The sliced fennel softens but keeps its shape and every so often you get a fennel seed like a jewel of intense anise flavour on your spoon.

We ate ours with toasted bread with homemade garlic butter and Parmesan, and it made for a fine post-recovery Sunday lunch.

And if you're wondering what I want to try next from A Homemade Life? Pistachio cake with honeyed apricots, buckwheat pancakes, fruit-nut balls, and coeur à la crème with raspberry purée. To name a few.

* We actually made that salad three times in five days. What can I say? It's a fennel and Asian pear revelation.

one year ago: chocolate coconut macaroons
two years ago: Dutch babies and turning 3
three years ago: gumdrop cake and turning 2
four years ago: whisky marmalade
five years ago: creamy celeriac soup and muesli

tomato soup with two fennels
very slightly adapted from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
serves 6 – 8

3 tbsp. olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, quartered and sliced thinly
2 medium fennel bulbs (about 11/4 pounds), trimmed, quartered from root to stalk, and sliced thinly – and if there are fennel fronds, chop them finely and set them aside to garnish
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 sprigs fresh thyme, tied with a string*
2 tsp. fennel seeds
2 28-ounce cans whole peeled tomatoes, best quality you can get
water or chicken stock
3/4 tsp. sea salt or to taste**
very small dollop honey, to taste
a splash or two of red wine vinegar

Heat a large Dutch oven up over medium heat. Pour the olive oil in. Add the onion and fennel and stir. Stirring occasionally, cook for 5 – 6 minutes, until the onion starts to soften. Stir the garlic in and cook another 5 – 7 minutes, stirring often, until the onion is very soft. Stir the thyme and fennel seeds in and cook about 2 minutes, until you can smell them.

Pour the two cans of tomatoes in. Fill one can with water or chicken stock (I used chicken stock) and stir in. Bring to a steady simmer, and cook uncovered for about 45 minutes, until it tastes like soup and the fennel is softer but still holds its shape.

Add some salt and taste. Add more salt if necessary. Add a very small dollop of honey and a splash of red wine vinegar. Taste and decide if it needs any more salt, honey or vinegar. Add the reserved fennel fronds. Serve.

* Molly calls for 1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves chopped, but I find stripping thyme stalks to be the most tedious task in the world. You could, if you like that sort of thing.
** I just got a bag of very inexpensive sel gris and tried it – worked very well

green beans with garlicky tomato concassé

The first real frost forecast came late last week.

After some discussion, we decided that tucking table clothes around the tomato plants probably wouldn't provide enough protection, as it had the week before.

So, Thursday night after dinner, my intrepid husband donned a headlamp and got out our biggest bowl. He came back in with his bowl full of little green tomatoes.

Now, we have two full cookie sheets of tomatoes in various stages of green to red.

But I'm not concerned.

Because I have discovered the wonderful world of tomato concassé.

I don't think I'd ever had concassé before, except maybe in a fancy restaurant where I didn't know all the names for things that happily passed by my lips.

Laura Calder, of course, knows the names for French foods, and I found this recipe for green beans with garlicky tomato concassé as part of a menu called "An Unintimidating Dinner on a Reasonable Budget"* in Dinner Chez Moi.

How could I resist?

It turns out that a concassé is this plump, velvety mass of tomato sauce that tastes like it costs  well beyond "reasonable."

I think the secret might be the mere half a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, which somehow brightens the tomatoes but doesn't make them at all acidic. And that little teaspoon of sugar makes the tomatoes softer and more friendly, too.

Concassé is a tomato sauce transformed, and it's lovely and smooth alongside crisp green beans. Just the thing for your trays of tomatoes.

* If you're curious what else is on Laura's menu: avocado with citrus dressing, flat-roasted chicken with merguez sausages and a cake of cherries.


one year ago: beet hummus
two years ago: parsley lentil pasta
three years ago: mrs. doucet's apple chutney

green beans with garlicky tomato concassé
from Laura Calder

4 large tomatoes
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 – 3 garlic cloves, sliced
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper
675 g. (1 1/2 lbs) green beans, trimmed

First, set about peeling the tomatoes. Bring a pot of water to boil. Mark a small X on the tomato bottoms and drop them into the simmering water. Leave in for 10 seconds to 1 minute to loosen the skin. Use a slotted spoon to take the tomatoes out and set the tomato water aside. Place the tomatoes in ice-cold water so they stop cooking and you can work with them sooner.

When they're cool enough, peel the tomatoes. Make thick slices and push out the seeds. Set the seeds aside to use for something else.* Chop the tomato flesh until it's a pulp.

Put a large frying pan over medium heat and heat the oil. Cook the garlic gently for up to one minute; don't let it colour. Stir in the tomato pulp, sugar, balsamic vinegar and bay leaves. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until it becomes a thick sauce, about 20 minutes. Remove the bay leaves.

Set the tomato water over the heat again and salt it. Once it's boiling, cook the green beans until al dente, about 5 minutes. Drain the beans and put them in an ice-water bath to stop further cooking. Drain again.

Stir the beans into the tomato concassé and gently heat through. Serve.

* I like to put the juicy tomato seeds in a small bowl, season it with salt and pepper, and eat it like a fancy appetizer.

salmon with warm tomato basil oil

Last week, I mentioned my love affair with Ricardo videos. (Luckily, Scott also loves the videos, so it's all above board.)

This week, I'd like to tell you about the other chef I let pop into my world on a regular basis: Laura Calder.

There are many reasons I love Laura. Let me count them for you.

1. She always wears dresses.
2. When she says "just a little bit of butter," she puts a huge bit of butter into the pan.
3. She has a somewhat similar background to me: languages, journalism, public relations, appreciation of bacon . . .

Laura has also worked on food in France, as a cookbook writer and helping to run a cooking school. She is a genius with meat and has taught me how to sear and brown and braise.

(My mother is also very good at cooking meat, but I completely threw away my chance to learn from her, since I was a vegetarian during my teenage years at home. Alas. She teaches me things now when I visit.)

Anyway, I bet you're wondering about this fish and these tomatoes and that basil?

Turns out, tomatoes and basil aren't just for pasta! Or bread!

Nope, they're also for salmon. Just take a bit of olive oil, warm it gently, throw in the tomatoes and basil and you have a lovely treat for your salmon, which has been baking in the oven for a few minutes.

We also tried this with a very light salmon that was almost a trout and it was a very happy fish indeed with its slick of tomatoes and basil. (Trout: so close to salmon and yet so different. How does that work? Are they related?)

What to serve it with? I'd suggest new potatoes and a simple green salad with loganberry vinaigrette. Your plate may look like it came from the cafeteria at IKEA, but it will taste a lot fresher. (Don't new boiled potatoes rolling around your plate and bumping into a piece of salmon make you think of IKEA?)

One year ago: Kristina's nuss kuchen (cherry hazelnut cake)
Two years ago: honey orange cream

salmon with warm tomato basil oil
slightly adapted from Laura Calder
serves 4 – 6

a filet of salmon or trout to serve 4 – 6 people (about 600 – 800 g.)
salt and pepper
1/3 – 1/2 c. virgin olive oil
2 tomatoes, seeded* and finely diced
1 handful basil leaves, cut in fine strips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (160 degrees Celcius).

Rub a good amount of salt and pepper into the salmon. Bake until it's just cooked through. It should take about 15 minutes; start checking on it after 12.

In the meantime, set a small pot with a heavy bottom over medium-low heat. Pour in the olive oil and warm it. This will happen quickly, possibly in 1 – 2 minutes. Whatever you do, err on the side of not overheating the oil. Remove it from the heat.

Check that you haven't heated the oil too hot. Standing as far away as you can, drop a piece of tomato into it and step back. If it fizzes and suddenly deep-fries, the oil is too hot. Give it a few minutes to cool down. If the tomato just sits happily in the oil, you may carry on.

Stir the tomato and basil into the oil. Taste and season with salt and pepper, keeping in mind that you've already put salt and pepper on the salmon.

Once the fish is done and out of the oven, move it to a serving platter. Spoon the warm tomato and basil oil over. Serve.


*Here's an easy way to seed a tomato. Cut it into wedges. Use a sharp paring knife to scrape out the seeds. Done.