20-Minute Tomato Soup

Six weeks. The daycare is reopening with protocols next week. I got the call Friday: come back Monday, new procedures, smaller groups, staggered hours. I sat in the kitchen and breathed with relief for about three minutes. Not just the income, though the income matters enormously. But the children. Toddlers have been home for six weeks and some of them have had hard homes to be in for six weeks and I want to be in the room where they are. I want to be a consistent person who shows up for them.

I have been making fewer elaborate dishes this week, partly from cooking fatigue, partly because I spent six weeks trying to not be worried by cooking and eventually you have to just be worried for a while without cooking over it. I ate toast with the sourdough bread and eggs and soup from a can for two dinners and felt no shame about this. Sometimes you have to put the pot down.

Porch visit with Gloria on Sunday again. This time James came to the door too, slowly, his cane clicking on the floor, and he stood at the screen and looked at me on the porch for a moment and said: you look thin. I said: I am fine. He said: you are eating. I said: I have bread. He made a sound that meant: that is not a full answer. Gloria said: I am going to send food back with you. I said: you do not have to. She went inside and came back with a bag through the crack of the door: frozen soup she had made, a piece of pecan pie in a container, her mother ceramic bowl with banana pudding covered in plastic wrap. I drove home with that bag on the seat and cried somewhere on the highway, the specific cry of being known and fed when you needed it.

When Gloria handed that bag through the door—frozen soup, pecan pie, banana pudding—I thought about how soup is the food people reach for when they want to say I see you without making it complicated. I had been living on canned soup and toast and feeling fine about it, and honestly I still feel fine about it, but I wanted to share the version I make when I’m ready to come back to the stove: a twenty-minute tomato soup that pairs exactly right with sourdough, that asks almost nothing of you, and that somehow still feels like something someone made on purpose.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, smashed
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
2 cans (28 oz each) whole peeled tomatoes, with juices
1 cup vegetable or chicken broth
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
Salt and black pepper, to taste
3 tablespoons heavy cream or half-and-half (optional, for finishing)
Toasted sourdough bread, for serving

Instructions

Sauté the aromatics. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4–5 minutes until softened. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Add tomatoes and broth. Pour in the canned tomatoes with their juices and the broth. Stir in the sugar and dried basil. Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes, breaking up the tomatoes with a spoon as they cook.
Blend until smooth. Use an immersion blender directly in the pot to puree the soup until smooth, or carefully transfer in batches to a countertop blender. Return to the pot over low heat.
Season and finish. Taste and season with salt and black pepper. If using cream, stir it in now and heat gently for 1–2 minutes—do not boil.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and serve with thick slices of toasted sourdough bread on the side.

Nutrition (per serving)

20-Minute Tomato Soup — The Meal That Lets You Just Be Worried for a While