Now that it’s Fall, it’s the perfect time for soups (even if it was 70 degrees in New York yesterday – oh well).  Tomato soup is a vegetarian staple, but it can also be incredibly boring and bland.  Recently, however, we came across this recipe from Bon Appétit, so we decided to put our own spin on it.

Here’s what we used:

• 6 shallots
• A bulb of fennel
• Olive oil
• Smoked paprika
• Cayenne powder
• 2 28-ounce cans of whole peeled tomatoes
• 2 ciabatta rolls
• Sea salt
• Vegetable broth
• Butter (use a non-dairy vegetable oil spread if you want to make this vegan)

First, we chopped up the shallots and the fennel bulb and then put them in a Dutch oven with a little bit of olive oil.

We sprinkled the veggies with a healthy dose of the smoked paprika and cayenne powder and sautéed them until they got a little bit soft.

Then we added both cans of tomatoes.  You want the tomatoes in pieces while they sauté, so you can crush them up by hand or with a fork or a potato masher.  Then we let everything sit over medium heat for about half an hour.

While this was cooking, we also made some toasty bread for dunking in the soup.  We took our ciabatta rolls and sliced them up, then brushed both sides of each slice with olive oil.

We grilled them on a griddle until each side was a toasty brown and then sprinkled them with sea salt.

Once the soup was done cooking, we added 1 cup of veggie broth to make a more soup-like consistency.  Then we used an immersion blender to mix everything together.  Right at the end, we added a little bit of butter and blended that up too to give the soup a more creamy consistency.

Adding paprika and cayenne to the soup gave it a mild spiciness that set it apart from more standard versions of tomato soup.  It was also nice to have some homemade toasty bread to eat with the soup.  So, even if the weather is still warm by you, consider adding this variation of tomato soup to your seasonal repetoire.