Cream of Tomato Soup

From foodtv.com, by Georgia Downard.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 small carrot, peeled and finely diced
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 pound fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped, or 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, juices reserved
• 2 cups reduced-sodium canned chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon fresh basil or 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 2 teaspoons fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup light cream or milk
• Salt and pepper

Directions

In a large nonreactive saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and carrot and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, 1 to 2 minutes without allowing to color. Add tomatoes with their juices, broth, tomato paste, basil, thyme and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer stirring frequently, 15 minutes. Remove and discard bay leaf.

In a food processor or blender, puree soup in batches until smooth. Return to pan and stir in cream. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Simmer until heated through, 3 to 5 minutes, and serve.

This is a pretty basic, very tasty cream of tomato soup, much like other tomato soups I've made, like this. I did use canned tomatoes, and the result was a thinner soup that I would have liked. I would use canned diced tomatoes in the future. I felt the soup was too thin, so added another tablespoon of tomato paste; as I've said in other tomato soup recipes, I've sometimes accidentally used the whole can (what are you supposed to do with the leftover paste??) so I might just go ahead and do that too. I also added a stalk of celery and some garlic with the carrots and onion. Finally, I only had about 1/2 c of chicken broth on hand, so I just used chicken stock I had to complete the 2 cups. What's the difference between broth and stock anyway? I had 2% milk around from another recipe, so went ahead and used that as the "cream."

So this was good, reasonably fast and easy to make, and has (temporarily at least) sated my craving for tomato soup.