Tomato Bread Soup with Mini Grilled Fontina Cheese Sandwiches
With only a handful of ingredients, this Tuscan peasant soup is deceptively simple, but tastes so rich and decadent, you’d swear there was cream in it. Heads up: blending the soup with olive oil is an important step to produce its velvety texture. The bread becomes suspended—almost like a custard—in the silky tomatoes; the basil adds a subtle perfume. Paired with nutty, gooey-smooth Fontina cheese sandwiches, this comfort food classic pushes all the right buttons.
Recipe information
Yield
serves 4
Ingredients
Mini Grilled Fontina Cheese Sandwiches
Preparation
Step 1
Put a soup pot over medium-high heat and pour in 2 tablespoons of the oil. When the oil is shimmering, add the onion and garlic. Cook and stir for a few minutes until the onion is soft; season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Add the tomatoes and their juices. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, and simmer until the tomatoes begin to break down into a chunky pulp, about 5 minutes.
Step 2
Toss in the basil leaves and bread. Cook, stirring gently, until the bread gets very soft and absorbs the liquid, about 5 minutes. Push the bread pieces down with a wooden spoon if they float to the top. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 15 minutes.
Step 3
Add the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil and remove from the heat. Working in batches, ladle the soup into a blender. Alternatively, if you have an immersion blender, this is a great time to use it. Puree for a few seconds until completely smooth. Pour the soup into a tureen or other pot and season with salt and pepper as needed.
Step 4
To serve, ladle the soup into bowls, drizzle with olive oil, and garnish with parsley. Serve the grilled cheese sandwiches on the side for dipping.
Mini Grilled Fontina Cheese Sandwiches
Step 5
Put the bread slices on a cutting board and butter one side of each slice. Place a large nonstick skillet or griddle over medium heat. When the pan is hot, add 4 slices of bread, buttered side down. Divide the Fontina among the slices. Top with the remaining 4 slices of bread, buttered side up. Cook, pressing occasionally with a flat spatula, until golden brown on the bottom, about 2 minutes. Turn the sandwiches over and toast the other side until the bread is golden and the cheese melts, roughly a minute. Transfer the sandwiches to a cutting board and cut each into 4 squares or triangles.
Ingredient Note
Step 6
Beef Tomatoes
Step 7
Virtually all of the nation’s field-grown tomatoes come from Florida during the winter growing season. Big and beautiful, rich red beefsteaks are my tomatoes of choice. Balanced in both sugar and acid, their sunny fruit flavor and juicy sweetness shine with minor embellishment; there really is no substitute. I find Roma, or plum, tomatoes a bit too dry and mealy, and those little out-of-season tomatoes sold on the vine are full of water, have little to no flavor, plus are expensive to boot! The best quality beefsteak tomatoes are not always available at major supermarkets. Seek them out at farmers’ markets (or better yet, grow them in your garden or in patio containers, if that’s an option). When buying, look for tomatoes with intense color that feel firm and heavy and smell like the plant itself. A slightly underripe tomato will ripen on the counter at room temperature. Do not refrigerate tomatoes; cold stops the ripening process, kills their flavor, and gives them an unpleasant mealy texture.
