Smoked Tomato Soup With Homemade Crackers

Well the weather has taken a turn. The rain has set in for the winter which means it's time for some good warm food to bring a little pep back to our lives! To me that means soups and braises. Let's start with soup.

One of our favorite soups is tomato soup. When we have a pureed soup we always need crackers! So we got to thinking......And we came up with smoked tomato soup with smoked cheddar and cage aged gruyere crackers. We really enjoyed it so we thought why not share! (remember to keep the smoke mild, it should just add a nice compliment to the soup, not be the main attraction!)

Crackers
1 C Old Cheddar
1 C Gruyere (the better the quality of cheese the better the cracker will be!)

Smoke cheese with a mild wood (We used maple....temps about 100 degrees or under, smoke for an hour) We do all of our smoking on a Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker but any smoker will do!

- Grate cheese, mix with 1.5 cups Flour (Use a low protein flour), and a couple tablespoons of herbs (I used freeze dried chives).

- Mix with 1 cup of buter
- form into balls and squish on cookie sheet (We covered it with silplat)
- Sprinkle a coarse sea salt and smoked paprika on top
- Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or so

Tomato Soup
- 1/2 cup butter
- 3 onions

Dice onions and sweat on med heat with butter

- 6 cloves garlic

Add finely diced garlic for about a minute

- 2 Liters of homemade chicken stock (or a good store bought), or vegetable stock if you are looking for a vegetarian soup.
- 10 smoked roma tomato's (I smoke these at the same time as the cheese. The night before I cut them in half and soak in olive oil. I often add herbs to the marinade but not for the soup. In this case I added 1 C of fresh parmasean. I smoke them for one hour the same as the cheese)

- t Allspice
- Pinch sugar
- T red chili flakes

Put the tomato's with the chicken stock and spices in with the onion and garlic mixture, bring to a boil and simmer for an hour. Take off heat and add:

- 1/2 Cup fresh Thyme (mediteranean, less if using french)
- Salt and pepper

Mix with an immersion blender till a fine puree

Top each bowl with a cracker and serve

Team 58

Big surprise but Team 58 is a competitive bbq team. Our goal is to cook great food while fading into the background. We don't use big cookers, have no fancy tents and don't sell any products. We are simply about good food. The home base for The BBQ Team is Ucluelet BC on Vancouver Island but we have team members in Yorkton Saskatchewan, Calgary Alberta, Tofino BC, and San Jose California. While all competitions focus on traditional low and slow bbq (to a point) we are about foods, of all colors and all creeds! That is what this is all about!

2010 will be the first year for the new fancy team name. In the past we have competed under the name "At Least We Thought It Tasted Good". In 2009 we competed in the Western Canada BBQ Championship in Regina, The Canadian BBQ Championship in Whistler, and the BBQ on the Bypass in Langley.

Here is a picture of our set up in Regina, our fancy tarp was due to some rain at night!
Here is a picture of our cookers in Regina.
And finally a picture of our cookers in Langley.
Our goal is to compete using the simplest means possible! Our first year was much more sucesful than expected. Here's to a great 2010!

What this space will be used for is a few of our cooking endevours. Not that anyone cares!