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Quickly Made Tomato and Macaroni Soup
Break a cupful of the egg macaroni into small pieces, cover with a quart of boiling salted water, and simmer slowly for an hour. Add 1 cup of stewed, strained, and seasoned tomatoes; cook a moment, and just before serving add one cup of cream or rich milk.
A thin, quick soup built on the starchy water the macaroni cooks in rather than on stock. The one thing to watch is the cream going into acidic tomato.
- Add the cream off the heatTomato acid will curdle cream if the pot is boiling. Pull the pan from the burner, stir the warmed cream in at the end, and return it to low heat only long enough to take the chill off.
- Egg macaroniPasta made with egg in the dough, once sold alongside plain macaroni and still available as egg noodles. Any short dried pasta works; the egg version gives a slightly richer body to the broth.
- An hour is far too longPeriod recipes routinely call for long boiling of macaroni, but modern macaroni is done in 8 to 12 minutes. Simmer it in the quart of salted water until tender, and do not drain -- the starchy liquid is the soup base.
- Volume of liquidWith a short cook the quart of water will barely reduce, so you will end up with a thinner soup than the original. Simmer uncovered for a few extra minutes to concentrate it, or start with three cups of water.
- Stewed, strained tomatoesA cup of canned crushed tomatoes pushed through a sieve, or plain passata, matches the intent. Season it separately with salt and pepper before it joins the pot, as the recipe directs.
- YieldAbout six cups, serving four as a first course. It has no stock and little fat, so it wants generous salt and a good grind of pepper.