Recipe: Magnolia Grill Spicy Green Tomato Soup with Crab and Country Ham

SPICY GREEN TOMATO SOUP WITH CRAB AND COUNTRY HAM

"This has become an early fall signature dish at the restaurant, and it is one of our more requested recipes. We suppose everyone needs another use for all those end-of-season green tomatoes besides frying them.

This soup is equally successful chilled or hot, and you can modify the garnish depending on your preference."

5 ounces country ham, julienned
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 medium onions, peeled and sliced thin
6 cloves garlic, sliced
2 jalapeno peppers, stemmed and sliced, with seeds
4 green Anaheims, stemmed, seeded, and sliced
2 green pasilla chiles, stemmed, seeded, and sliced
2 bay leaves
3 1/2 pounds firm green tomatoes, cored and cut into eighths
1 1/2 quarts shrimp stock or homemade chicken stock
1 handful fresh basil leaves (about 1 cup)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons Tabasco (or to taste)
Salt to taste
INGREDIENTS FOR THE GARNISH:
1 pound crabmeat, picked over for shells (or 1 pound peeled, cooked shrimp, cut into 1/4-inch pieces)
1 cup sour cream, thinned with 2 tablespoons milk
1 cup fresh Tomato Concasse (recipe follows), combined with 1/4 cup capers, chopped
1/2 cup scallions, sliced

Cook the ham in the vegetable oil until crisp and golden; drain, reserve the ham, and return the oil to the pot.

Cook the onions in the oil over moderate heat until soft but not colored. Add the garlic, jalapenos, Anaheims, pasilla chiles, and bay leaves and cook 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook 15 minutes, until the tomatoes soften.

Remove the bay leaves, add the basil, and puree in a blender, working in batches. Season with lemon juice, Tabasco, and salt. Cool and reserve.

Gently reheat the soup over medium heat and adjust the seasoning. Place crab or shrimp in warm bowls. Ladle the soup into the bowls, and garnish with sour cream, Tomato Concasse and caper mixture, country ham, and sliced scallions.

TOMATO CONCASSE
"French culinary language is concise and wonderful. "Tomato concasse" is tomatoes that are peeled, seeded, and chopped.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Cut the cores out of tomatoes and make a small X in the skin on the blossom end of each. Slip the tomatoes into the water for 5 to 30 seconds, depending on their ripeness, until the skin just begins to slip away from the fruit. Plunge into ice water to arrest the cooking. Peel the skin, cut the tomatoes in half or into quarters, and remove the seeds. Cut the flesh into the desired dice and reserve. Half a pound of tomatoes will yield about 2 cups of concasse, depending on the variety of tomato used.

Makes 8 servings
Source: Not Afraid of Flavor: Recipes from Magnolia Grill by Ben and Karen Barker