This week’s guest post is from Nelly at Aneelee. Aneelee is a family-friendly vegetarian food blog where Nelly shares tasty recipes, weekly meal plans, and stories from her family kitchen. Keeping up with Aneelee is a treat for me since Nelly and I share the same CSA. I often check out her blog for inspiration on how to use up my own share of fresh local veggies. This delicious soup is a great example of the kind of healthy, delicious fare you’ll find there. Thanks for sharing your recipe, Nelly!
The cooler weather and fennel that came alongside our first market tomatoes this weekend created the perfect conditions for our first cozy bowl of tomato soup. Fennel is a tough one around here. It’s flavor is too strong for inclusion in salads and placing it in stock (which is usually a catch-all vegetable-saving trick) monopolizes the flavor enough to strip the homemade staple of its versatility. Boo.
Much more trial and error and even more uneaten fennel dishes finally landed me at roasting. The strong licorice flavor dampens significantly with help from the oven and makes the perfect base for what is now our favorite tomato soup. She likes it served with a grilled cheese (of course) and we’ve been having it with our current sandwich obsession.
Roasted Tomato and Fennel Soup
Ingredients
- 1 fennel bulb, cored and quartered
- 10-12 medium tomatoes, cored and halved*
- 3 tablespoons of olive oil, divided
- 1 small onion, finely diced
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 3 cups of vegetable broth (substitute water if none on hand)
- salt & pepper
* NOTE – Don’t have fresh tomatoes to use? Substitute a quart of oven-roasted tomatoes from your freezer or pantry.
Directions
- Place fennel and tomatoes on a baking sheet. Toss in 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, Salt and pepper liberally, and roast in 375º oven until fennel has begun to caramelize. Remove from oven and set aside or store in refrigerator till ready to prepare soup.
- Place 1 tablespoon of olive oil in large soup pot and warm over medium heat.
- Add onions and cook until they begin to soften.
- Add minced garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes (don’t let your garlic brown!).
- Add roasted tomatoes, fennel and 3 cups of broth and bring all to a simmer.
- Puree soup (in batches in a blender) and transfer back to pot.
- Salt and pepper to taste.