Nadine Soup

Nadine is Brian's sister and she's awesome. Unfortunately for all of us US-based people, she lives in Chile so I am only privy to her awesomeness a few times a year.  Fortunately for us Atlanta-based people, one of those few times was the past two weeks.  For those of you who don't know Nadine, here are a few quintessential facts:
1.  She's currently battling my sister for the funniest person I know.
2.  She has the curliest hair I have ever seen on a white girl.
3.  The jury is still out on who has the better bitch-face, me or her.
I could go on, but that would be a little boring and a numbered list cannot truly describe her awesomeness.  Instead, I tried to create a soup to embody said awesomeness.  I was working off a few things: her curly hair, the fact that she requested pizza for dinner when she go to the A, and her dislike of really spicy food. With a little help from Brian, I came up with this Nadine Soup or if you don't know Nadine, you could call this Pizza Soup.

For this soup you will need: a few cloves of garlic, an onion, sprig of rosemary, about 3 pounds of ripe, fresh tomatoes, about four cups of broth, three bell peppers, a whole mess of fresh basil, some curly pasta (mine is cavatappi), and the non-pictured crushed red pepper and shredded Parmesan cheese.

Start by mincing the garlic and rosemary and dicing the onion. I used some leftover roasted garlic from a dinner party we had on Friday night, but fresh is good too. If you're using fresh, you probably don't need more than 4 cloves not the 8 cloves I used.

Next, chop all the tomatoes. Mine were from a farmers market and were quite beaten up, but they were cheaper than the pretty ones (epic cheapness, there you are). I left the seeds in, but you could take them out if you have time you'd like to waste.

Now, it's cook time. Using your trusty soup pot, heat it over medium heat, throw in a bit of olive oil and let it get hot. Then, throw in the garlic, onions and rosemary.  Cook until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.

Next, add the tomatoes. Stirring to get everything all nicely mixed up. I wish I could have taken this picture in 3-D. Its like the tomatoes are just jumping off the screen.

Lastly, add the broth. Also, now is a good time to throw in any salt, pepper or crushed red pepper that you may like.  Take it a bit easy with the salt if you're planning on topping the soup with Parmesan cheese as it will bring some of its own saltiness to the pool. Let this simmer for about 20-30 minutes.  I didn't raise the heat because I hate it when tomato-based things boil on my stove top and make a ginormous mess, but if you like messes, feel free to bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer, as per usual soup instructions.

Meanwhile, fire roast the peppers. I halved mine, removed the seeds and roasted over my gas burners. But feel free to use a gas grill or broiler, and please try not to start a fire. My peppers were pretty small on account of the purple ones being from the farmers market and the green one coming from my garden, so they had a strong desire to fall through the burner grates and into the gas flames. I may have cursed at them a bit. When they're good and charred, put them in a plastic bag and seal it to help get the charred skins to fall off.

Next, chiffonade the basil.  As you can see, I used a ton of basil. My basil plant is out of control so I had a bunch lying around. Feel free to use less if you'd like, but I don't know why you'd do that as basil = delicious.

Hopefully by now the peppers are cool enough to touch. Remove the charred skins and dice them up.

Back to the soup pot, I wanted my soup blended like pizza sauce so I buzzed it with my stick blender.  Mashing the tomatoes with a potato masher would work nicely as well, if you prefer a chunkier soup. Then, I threw in the curly pasta (just like Na's hair!) and cooked for about 10 more minutes until the pasta was al dente.

To serve, top with some of the basil, roasted peppers and anything else you put on your pizza, which for me is always crushed red pepper and Parmesan. The topping idea was all Brian. I'm just not that clever.  You could even go crazy and have a whole buffet of pizza toppings for this soup. I could envision this being a fun, albeit somewhat messy, party idea. If you party with people who like tomato soup or who like Nadine.