Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Best Soup I Ever Ate

During February break of 2008 I traveled to Prague to visit my friend Joanna from college and then on to Italy and Greece with Lauren, another assistant. Lauren and I arrived in Florence on February 14 and decided to treat ourselves to a nice Valentine's Day dinner at a cute, family-run restaurant near our hostel that was a little more upscale than we would have eaten at otherwise. I remember that dinner was delicious, but the best part was undoubtedly the amazing soup I was introduced to that evening, pappa al pomodoro, a Tuscan tomato soup.


I absolutely adore tomatoes and almost any food product with tomatoes in it, especially tomato soup. This is the tomato soup to beat all other tomato soups. It's completely simple and completely delicious. It's a chunky soup made from tomatoes, stale bread, and seasoning (garlic, onion, sometimes basil and parmesan) all cooked up together and spooned into a bowl of goodness, topped with as much freshly grated parmesan as you want. Yum. I had a bowl every night we were in Tuscany (and usually an entire bowl of parmesan to go with it). I still dream of how amazing this soup was.

It can be made with fresh or canned tomatoes, and the tomatoes can be roasted or left as is. Perfect for any time of year! You can do a search for recipes online and find one that is exactly to your taste. Add this one to your list for dinner this week and I promise, you will not regret it.

5 comments:

islandgirl4ever2 said...

OMG! I can't tell you how good that looks on this -6C morning!!! It's almost 8 am and I'm thinking... "MMMM that soup would make a great breakfast!!" Weird, huh??
How 'bout that dried tomato bread in Budapest? YUMM!!! And that daily breakfast there at the hotel was pretty yummy!! Salted butter, too!!

au soleil levant said...

Oh man, that was a super good breakfast. I would go back to that hotel in a heartbeat!

Anonymous said...

Stop talking about food girls, you are killing me!

Nothing like fresh tomatoes, but I find those in supermarkets here are rather tasteless. Must be the cold.

Mary Harvest Kitchen said...

You could totally eat that, babe. Should have almost no impact on glucose...maybe leave out the bread and cheese.

au soleil levant said...

Zhu - good point about the tomatoes. Refigerating tomatoes actually alters one of the enzymes and therefore changes the flavor and yeah, most supermarkets will chill tomatoes to keep them around longer. If you have a nice vegetable market near you those should taste better.

Mary - food seems better the past few days, so I may be ready to try some of this! We'll see...