Tomato Bisque

Every week when I menu plan,  I ask Joe if there is anything he would like for dinner that week.  Most of the time he doesn't have any preferences other than saying "tacos".  (If you read my menu plans every week, you have probably noticed the high frequency of tacos.)  Because of his usual answer, I was more than a little surprised when he said "tomato bisque".  Hmmmm....all right...off to the internet I went.

I found a lot of recipes...most of which were highly involved and while I like cooking I don't really enjoy lots of steps if I can help it.  That being said, I didn't just want to open a can of tomato bisque and plop it on the table.  If you look at the nutritional information on the side of a can of soup you can quickly see why trying to do some of the work yourself is worth it.  It turns out though that opening cans is all I ended up really doing for this recipe.

Ingredients
2 14.5 oz cans of stewed tomatoes (I had never used these before and was surprised that they were so much different than just canned tomatoes.  I think they also had celery, onion and green pepper chunks along with the sliced of tomatoes which definitely added to the flavor.)
1 12 oz can of fat free evaporated milk

Seriously...that is it.


Directions
1. Slightly puree the stewed tomatoes.  I left a little bit of chunkiness to the soup but I suppose you could do it as long as you wanted.
2.  Bring the pureed stewed tomatoes to a boil and then turn down to a simmer.  Stir in the evaporated milk.
3. Serve

I told you I like recipes with very few steps.

Joe ended up adding a little bit of salt to his bowl and I suppose I could have added some to the recipe but Joe adds salt to pretty much everything no matter how much I use in my recipe, so I actually use very little when I actually cook.  He ate a big bowl and said that he liked it...the bowl was empty at the end of dinner.  I tried it and I guess it was fine, but I don't like tomato soup all that much to begin with so I am probably not a good judge.  Joe said it was a keeper so if you like tomato bisque I guess it would be worth a try!

None of the recipes I looked at used evaporated milk...most of them used heavy cream.  It may of tasted better but I don't think Joe cared and I certainly do care about the amount of fat that we are putting into our bodies and using evaporated milk in place of cream when cooking is something I have picked up along the way that hasn't failed us yet.  If you aren't worried about it, then go ahead and use heavy cream.

Many of the recipes also called for fresh or dried basil but I didn't add that because Joe doesn't like how sweet basil makes food taste.  He might be a little picky, but I am just as picky about other food things.  If you aren't....throw some in there.

As an aside, I made grilled cheese sandwiches along with the bisque because I am pretty sure it is the law.   I used some leftover artisan bread with the garlic cloves baked in and used Havarti and colby jack cheeses.  I added roasted peppers and onions to mine and it was incredible!

Anyway, it was a perfect and quick dinner for a dreary, lazy Oregon day!  You will be seeing it again on the menu plan for sure!