Creamy Tomato Soup and Italian Patty Melts
- Ready In:
- 35mins
- Ingredients:
- 25
- Serves:
-
4
ingredients
-
Soup
- 4 cups whole milk
- 3 (14 ounce) cans diced tomatoes, drained
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- salt and pepper
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons butter, cut in pieces
- 1 stalk celery, coarsely chopped
- 1 garlic clove
- 1⁄2 cup store bought basil pesto (or use watercress and hazelnut pesto sauce see recipe below)
-
Watercress and Hazelnut Pesto
- 12 ounces watercress, stems removed
- 1⁄2 cup hazelnuts, toasted
- 1⁄2 cup extra virgin olive oil, eyeball it
- 2 cracked garlic cloves
- 1⁄4 teaspoon ground nutmeg or 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
- salt and pepper
- 1⁄2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
-
Sammies
- extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling, plus 1 tablespoon
- 4 sweet italian sausage patties, 1/4 pound each, available in packaged meat case of the market
- 1 cubanelle long sweet italian light green pepper, seeded and sliced
- 1 medium yellow onion, sliced
- salt and pepper
- 8 slices Italian bread or 8 slices white bread
- 8 slices deli-sliced provolone cheese
directions
- Heat the milk over moderate heat in a medium pot.
- Put tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, salt and pepper, sugar, flour, butter, celery into a food processor and grind until smooth.
- Pour mixture into milk and raise heat to bring soup to a boil.
- Reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes.
- While soup cooks, make pesto and sammies.
- Fill the food processor with watercress, loosely packed.
- Add hazelnuts, 1/2 of the oil and garlic cloves to the watercress in the processor. Add nutmeg, salt and pepper to the processor bowl, set lid in place and pulse grind the mixture into a thick paste.
- Add any remaining watercress to the processor and grind into the paste by pulsing the processor again.
- Transfer watercress paste to a bowl.
- Stir in the remaining oil and the cheese. Taste pesto sauce and adjust seasonings.
- Heat a griddle over medium high heat. Drizzle the pan with extra-virgin olive oil and add the patties and cook 5 minutes on each side.
- Remove from the griddle and add another tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil and the peppers and onions.
- Season the peppers and onions and cook until just tender, 5 minutes.
- Remove them from the griddle.
- Wipe the griddle clean and reduce heat to medium low.
- Assemble sandwiches: place 4 slices of bread down, top with 1/4 each of the peppers onions, then a slice of cheese, a cooked sausage patty, another slice of cheese and then place bread on top.
- Add butter to griddle and cook sammy melts 2 or 3 minutes on each side until golden and cheese is melted.
- Press with spatula as sammies cook or set another heavy skillet on sammies to weigh them down.
- Pour soup into shallow bowls and add a couple of rounded spoonfuls of pesto to each dish and stir it into the soup.
- Cut the patty melts corner to corner and dip in the soup as you eat.
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Reviews
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These are absolutely wonderful, although there is no way I can put this all together in 30 minutes (but close)! I even made the watercress pesto, which freezes nicely for later use. I have made this recipe several times now (and that extra pesto comes in handy). The soup is delicious and the sandwiches are a unique twist on a patty melt.
RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
I am a teacher who is near the end of my career. I have many craft interests and have just added cooking to my list. Since I like to keep a check on what DH eats I usually try to follow the WW diet and just love their cookbooks. Recipezaar has become the answer to my many cookbooks and recipes I gather and just can't seem to get organized. MMMMM maybe in retirement.
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