I feel I must share this with you. Well, the theory at least. If you want to do it for real, you’ll have to buy your own ingredients. Taken from the book ‘Soup’, appropriately enough…
TOMATO, BLUE CHEESE AND BACON SOUP
Ingredients: 8 tomatoes, 1tbsp olive oil, 200g streaky bacon, 50g butter, 2 medium onions, 2 sticks celery, 2 medium carrots, 1.25 litres chicken stock, 50g plain flour, 300g blue cheese, 150ml double cream, salt/pepper, chopped spring onions (scallions for the US readers)
1. Preheat oven to gas mark 7 (or 220 centigrade, 425 fahrenheit). Place tomatoes in roasting tin, drizzle with olive oil and roast for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, slice the onions, celery and carrots and crumble the cheese. Grill the bacon slowly until crispy, saving the fat for later.
2. When the tomatoes are done, blend them in a food processor. When the bacon is done, break it into small pieces.
3. Heat the reserved bacon fat in a large saucepan over moderate heat, adding the butter and letting it melt. Sweat the carrot, onion and celery for 5 minutes, covered. Add the flour and stir until absorbed into the fat. Gradually pour in the chicken stock, stirring all the time so it mixes in smoothly (you’re making a roux sauce, basically).
4. Add the cheese and puréed tomatoes, let the cheese melt completely and bring to boil briefly. If you want smooth, perfect soup, blend the whole lot in the food processor at this point. We didn’t; we wanted the texture of the vegetables.
5. Whether you blended or not, heat the soup gently in the pan (not boiling this time) and add the cream and salt/pepper. Serve sprinkled with the bacon and spring onions.
I love this soup. It has three of the most amazing ingredients – tomatoes, blue cheese and bacon. We used Shropshire Blue, because it was cheap, but something a little more pungent (Danish blue, maybe) could be interesting, or you could use Stilton for extra creaminess.