Winter Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese

Winter Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese

Serves 3

Ingredients

• butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 carrot , chopped
• 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 75g tomato purée
• 750ml vegetable stock
• 1 tbsp creamed horseradish (optional)
• 75ml double cream
• 4 slices of bread
• 4 slices of cheese like cheddar or Gruyère, sliced or grated

Melt a knob of butter in a pan and cook the onion and carrot until softened. Add the tomatoes, purée and stock then simmer for 15-20 minutes, till the veg is soft. Blend until smooth, serve in bowls and top with the horseradish and cream. To make the sandwiches, butter the bread on both sides and put the cheese in between. Fry on each side until the cheese has melted. Cut into pieces.

Modified from http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2672639/winter-tomato-soup-with-grilled-cheese-sandwiches

In my last post I said I wasn't going to use cream in dishes again. I then immediately go out and make another dish with cream. But this is different! Here the cream doesn't go in until the soup is about to be eaten. It's a garnish, not a necessity. I portioned out the soup into containers and added the cream only to the bowl I was about to eat. For the others, I waited until they had been microwaved.

This made a great lunch. The soup was full of good vegetables that blended together well. The sandwich were toasty and went well with the soup.

The day I made this soup, I was disappointed because it didn't taste like 'real' tomato soup. 'Real' tomato soup is creamy and smooth to taste. This soup was a good winter soup with a tomato base, but it wasn't a 'tomato' soup. I thought that the stock could be cut down to 500ml.

Imagine my surprise upon microwaving the first bowl of leftovers when the soup proceeded to be creamy! It tasted just like I thought tomato soup should taste like. The soup tastes better the day after. Neat, isn't it?

In the pictures I used slices of cheese for one sandwich and grated cheese for the other. I think the grated one came out better. If you don't have a grater, you can always dice up the slices for a similar effect. 

Winter Tomato Soup

Onion: EUR 0.25 at Tesco

Carrot, 1/10 of a bag at EUR 0.99/bag = EUR 0.10 at Tesco

400g Roma chopped tomatoes: EUR 1.09 at Tesco

75g Roma tomato puree: EUR 0.46 at Tesco

Kerrygold Butter, perhaps EUR 0.30's worth at Tesco

Double Cream, 75ml of a 250ml bottle at EUR 2.75/bottle = EUR 0.83 at Tesco

Vegetable stock cubes, 2/12 at EUR 1.25/pack = EUR 0.21 at Tesco

Total Cost: EUR 3.24 for three servings or EUR 1.08 for one serving

Grilled Cheese

Rosemary and Olive Oil Bread, 1/5 of a loaf at EUR 1.50/loaf = EUR 0.30 at Tesco

Cathedral City Mature Chedder, 1/10 of a block at EUR 3.50/block = EUR 0.35 at Tesco

Kerrygold Butter, perhaps EUR 0.30's worth at Tesco

Total Cost: EUR 0.95 for 1-2 servings

Total Cost: EUR 2.03 for one serving