Roasted Tomato Soup

We've made this soup a couple of ways lately. First using the hard hot house Roma tomatoes we have on hand for the ubitiquous salad and also canned San Marzano tomatoes. Roasting the tomatoes, onion, and garlic really helps intensify their flavors, and makes bland winter tomatoes as well as the canned ones more palatable. We garnished the top of the soup with a couple swishes of reduced Balsamic and Creme Fraiche. If using fresh tomatoes, I reccomend pureeing the soup with a food mill to extract the skins. If you use already peeled canned tomatoes you can use the blender, we used an immersion blender and left the soup a bit chunky.

Ten tomatoes, cut in half

1 large yellow onion, quartered

1 large red pepper

4 or 5 cloves of garlic

Freshly ground pepper

Fresh thyme leaves or 1/2 teaspoon dried

1/4 cup olive oil

Vegetable or chicken stock

Toss all of the ingredients, except the stock with the olive oil and roast in a preheated 400 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes-until the vegetables soften and begin to caramelize and char at the edges.

Place the roasted vegetables in a soup pot and cover with the stock.

Simmer for at least 15 minutes and puree-add salt if necessary, and serve with some reduced Balsamic and creme fraiche.