2-3 tomatoes
1 cup of cherry tomatoes
1 onion
1 garlic clove
2 red peppers
About 1 litre of water or vegetable stock (My tip is to add enough water to cover your vegetables and only add water if needed. You want your soup to have a thick creamy consistency; not too runny)
1 cup of heavy cream
1 block of feta cheese
Tips for herbs: you can never go wrong see what you have and what is in season most herbs are a good choice, i used rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, basil, oregano and always add some fresh crushed pepper
Optional: To decorate your soup and give it an extra little flavour you can add a little cream and fresh basil.
- On 22 Dec 2022
- In Christmas Recipes
- Prep Time: 75 Minutes
- Yield: 4
- Difficulty Level: Starter
Tomato & feta cream soup served with a Christmas Tree
Dear readers, after more than 6 years and more than 150 articles in my lovely wifes Katerina’s blog, I decided it is time for my appearance in her blog. Our daughter Dora, her husband and a lot of dear friends have already made this step. With this Christmas approaching rapidly, I decided it was my time to make this huge step and publish also a recipe. Not a recipe that I have come up with, but a recipe very dear to me. Tomato & feta cream soup.
Christmas time in Holland, were we spend quite often Christmas together with my parents and my dear brother and his wife, was always a challenge for my mother. She insisted always on cooking christmas dinner, but then she realized that cooking was not her most favorite hobby. She had to make a menu of what to cook. Luckily the start of the christmas dinner was easy. She would prepare a russian potato salad, which she bought always pre-prepared from the supermarket. The second dish was also easy, this was every year a soup. This would either be the ox-tail soup which was the favourite of my father. Or ir would be a tomato cream soup, from a tin or package from the supermarket as well, being the favourite of my brother and myself. Even before I met my lovely Katerina.
Once Katerina started supporting my mother with her preparations for the christmas dinner, everything about the christmas dinner changed. Not that my mother was not a good cook, but Katerina took it to another level completely. My mother not just let her take over her kitchen all in once, but the recipe that did convince my mother that her future daughter in law was an excellent cook, is the recipy that follows. I remember the big smile on my fathers face when he tasted this tomato cream soup for the first time. With him also my brother and my mother and myself were enjoying this soup very much and all wanted a second plate, before continuing with the rest of the christmas dinner.
Try this recipe and determine for yourselves the excellent taste of this beautifull christmas soup. And you know what, you can also enjoy this soup when it is not christmas. If you have read some of our previous blogs you might have understood my daughter is slightly obsessed with soups, another reason to publish this recipe.
Together with the soup, my daughter convinced me to serve the soup with a mini christmas trees made out of puff pastry, and a big puff pastry tree to share. The christmas tree is actually a homage to my wife’s christmas dinners she would make for our whole family. She kept making them years on end, most likely because we all loved them so much, and maybe also because they are just super easy and quick to make.
These puff pastry christmas trees remind me of family coziness and most of all christmas and food. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did and still do.
I wish you the nicest christmas you can wish for, with all dear ones around you.
Rik
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Ingredients
Ingredients for Christmas Tree
1 package of puff pastry
1 medium onion
Feta for garnish
Half a cup of pine nuts
Any herb you have or like
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Any bread, even old stale bread will do!
Instructions
1. **** ---- Preparation tomato feta cream soup ---- ****
2. Preheat your oven at 180C
3. Add the tomato, red peppers, cherry tomatoes, feta, garlic, onion, thime and rosemary to a baking tray and add some olive oil.
4. Place this in the oven at 180 for 25-30 min or until the tomatoes are nice and cooked and the feta has a golden brown colour.
5. In a pan, heat up a liter of water or vegetable stock.
6. Once the vegetable and feta mix are ready add it to a blender(optional remove the skin of peppers and tomatoes) we are looking for a nice thick consistency.
7. Once it is all blended we take about 2 table spoons and set it aside, the rest we add to a pann and slowly add our water or stock and herbs until we get the consistency wed like.
8. We let this boil over once and if we feel the need we pass it through a sif, lasty we add the heave cream and bring it to a boil once more.
9. One last taste test for salt and pepper.
10. Serve the soup in deep plates if you like. You can add a little bit of cream and basil as decor
11. **** ---- Preparation Big christmas tree ---- ****
12. Preheat your oven to 180C. before you even start with the soup make sure you have already taken out your puff pastry to defrost.
13. Caramalize your onions and brown your pine nuts.
14. Cut your puff pastry in a triangle and cut the sides see our picture for reference. all the left over we are going to cut in thin slices
15. Take some of the tomato soup base puree and spread it on your puff pastry. add the rest of the ingredients, and its ready to go in the oven.
16. For the mini christmas trees just add some tomato soup puree and fold into trees, tooth pick help keep them in shape.
17. Place these in the oven for about 10-20 min or until golden brown.
18. Now you have a beautiful big christmas tree to share with the soup and some mini ones for with the soup
Recipe Type : Christmas
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