Sunday Soup

 

My favorite soup hands down is tomato bisque. The first bowl I ever had was at Milano's Italian Kitchen, formerly on Berkley and Newbury in Boston, where I worked for two years. It would be over a decade later until I would get something comparable at the Hawaiian Hilton in Honolulu, where I was passing through to train new technicians in American Samoa. 

There have been many other tomato bisque soups I've gotten from sandwich shops and high end markets, all of them duds. Imagine my surprise when my girlfriend discovered Stop and Shop made a tomato bisque. At first, it was only available at the South Bay plaza store in Southie (where we just moved from), but they've since rolled it out to stores near where I live now. It is definitely high quality and delicious.

After weeks of enjoying it, I decided to add the one thing missing that the Milano's version had: A big ol' crouton with sour cream on top.

Whereas the restaurant had a Texas toast thick crouton, mine was more "last slice of bread loaf" crouton (I call it the "bread butt"). I was lazy and didn't want to slice it up before cooking.But it held the sour cream nicely and I didn't spill any while cutting it up with my spoon. 

I finally realized why the sour cream was so good. The tangy flavor is cancelled out once it's mixed in with the soup, adding only more creamy goodness. Maybe something in the tomatoes cancels the tang the same way tannins in red wine are cancelled out by eating certain meats. I don't want to look it up yet. I want to pretend I'm the first to discover this (the chef at Milano's just got lucky). 

The picture above was taken by my girlfriend, who knows more about photographing food, filters and the benefits of portrait mode than I do. 

 It's been a while since I've updated the banner to my Stone Soup Croutons series. I might try to create a new one the next time I sit down with soup on a quiet weekend afternoon. This winter being as cold as it is, that's not going to take too long to happen.