Garlicky Tomato and Sausage Soup

I found this recipe in a Chatelaine magazine and adapted it slightly to fit my own tastes. As a lover of hot, healthy fall foods, I just HAD to try this, and boy, am I ever glad I did! It's simple to make and it's delicious. Here goes:

You need 7-8 ripe tomatoes. I cannot overemphasize RIPE. I've made this soup twice, and the first time it was with deliciously deep red tomatoes, and it had a richer taste. Now's a good time to use up those slightly overripe tomatoes just waiting to be rescued from the frost.

You also need an entire head of garlic and a large sweet onion. Take off the papery outer skin of the head of garlic, but make sure it all stays intact. Slice the end off and it's ready to roast.



Chop up the onion into reasonably large chunks, and quarter each tomato. Now here's where the sausage comes in: the recipe calls for two hot Italian sausages, but because I am incapable of following a recipe perfectly, and because my stomach cannot handle the forty zillion grams of fat in ONE sausage, I tried two different kinds: extra lean Italian turkey sausage, and lean turkey breakfast sausage. The former was better. I also, uh, put in all five. Don't judge me. Slice those bad boys lengthwise, then again in half. Put everything--the head of garlic, the onions, the tomatoes, and the sausages on two greased baking sheets and drizzle with...

...extra virgin olive oil. The recipe called for 1/4 cup. I used about 1/8 of a cup because I can pick out the taste of olive oil in anything. It seemed to work fine. Drizzle the olive oil over the veggies and sausages, then sprinkle with Italian seasoning. It'll look like this:


Then you roast it all in a 425 oven until the veggies are slightly charred. NOTE: the oil will burn a bit at this temperature, and will leave your house a bit smoky if you're like me and didn't learn from your mistakes the first time. Next time I plan to try roasting it in a slower oven. In any event, it didn't alter the taste. Look at this roasted perfection:


Put the sausages aside onto a cutting board. Scoop all of the veggies into a food processor. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of its skins into the processor as well. Add about 1/4 cup of chicken/veggie/whatever broth onto the pans and scrape the yummy browned stuff off. Pour this into the food processor, too.


You're pretty much done. Pulse the veggies to your desired consistency. Put them in a pot. Chop up the sausages and throw them in, too. Add enough stock* to make it a bit thinner if you like. Heat and serve.


*I used canned chicken broth the first time, and homemade turkey stock the second time. The first time was more flavourful, simply because my turkey stock was not made with love and boiled down to the usual stock perfection I achieve. Why, you ask? Because I cooked the darn turkey back in the spring, and made a huge mistake. I brined it with rosemary and stock and apple juice and salt. I lovingly prepare stuffing. I roasted that bad boy in the oven. We ate scrumptious turkey for supper. Dave carved it up. I had some in the evening before bed.

AND THEN WE LEFT THE PLATE OF TURKEY OUT ALL THE LIVE LONG NIGHT.

I cried the next morning. I cannot express how much I love leftover turkey. Stupidly, we did refrigerate the carcass, so I half-heartedly made stock out of it and didn't reduce it enough, so it wasn't exceptionally flavourful.

Aaaanyway. There you have it--garlicky, tomato-y, yummy, sausagey soup. Enjoy!