Tahoe recipe: Thai tomato soup in 10 minutes or less

TAHOE-TRUCKEE, Calif. — This is soup weather, no way around it, snow or no snow. Maybe, if we eat a bunch of soup, the snow gods will bless us. Hey! We’re in the mood! Bring it on.

Most of the soups I enjoy are store-bought and, thus, fattening. Anything with the word “bisque” might as well have a burger attached. In fact, now that I think of it, they should have, like, Cracker Jack soup. The big surprise: a huge butt.

The other soups I enjoy are home-cooked and time consuming, involving a chicken carcass for the stock, lots of chopping of vegetables, and the results are always excellent.

This recipe gives us the best of all worlds: home cooked, without hidden calories and very easy. It comes to me from my babysitter. People who know me get irritated when I call her my “babysitter,” since I am 42, give or take a decade, but she was my babysitter when I was a small child, so the moniker sticks.

This recipe will stick around as long as she has. Thank God.

Thai tomato soup ingredients:

1 tbls. olive oil

2 cloves garlic

1/4 of a white onion, diced

1 tbls. red curry paste, I like Mae Ploy

1 can coconut milk

1 large can (14.5 ounces) fire-roasted tomatoes

1 tsp. salt

garnish (optional) fresh basil

Preparation:

In a large pan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and onion and cook for 2-3 minutes, until the onion is softened. Add the red curry paste then stir in the coconut milk, tomatoes and salt. Add additional salt if desired.

That’s it! So easy breezy, you’ll have time to light your fire.

Simone Grandmain is an internationally published travel and food writer who currently calls Truckee-Tahoe home. She welcomes your recipes, kitchen “must-haves” and food news at simonegrandmain@gmail.com.