Fare Exchange: How to make two tomato soups and a delicious dessert

Aah, January diners. Your culinary coffers are full of solutions, but first, here are some challenges in the 2015 Lost and Not Found box.

Readers still need Mrs. Boxell’s homemade vanilla ice cream. Also Farmer’s Daughter’s power salad, and gin and tonics made with frozen limes. Shopping lists, too: Can you tell one of us, and then more of us, where to buy Fleur de Sel salt and frozen lime and lemon juices “instead of the bottled kind that doesn’t taste like fresh juice”?

Since many of us sit down to Fare Exchange with a cup of coffee in hand, it seems right to begin with coffee talk. Longtime reader Michele Brown caught an errant comma in a listing of tasty coffees. “It should be one name: Guatemala Antiqua. I know because it is my favorite coffee. It will cause confusion to ask for them separately.”

Tell us more, we said to Ms. B. And she did.

“I found out about a company in North Carolina called Counter Culture,” she says. “They ship online orders. The beauty of their policy is that they don’t roast it until you order it, and ship as fast as they can to you, thereby assuring the best and freshest tasting cup. To us coffee purists, that’s heaven on earth. Any coffee you buy prepackaged can’t measure up to that because the flavor goes fast.

“Now, if you grind your beans, the grinder must be a blade grinder,” she continues. “It slices the bean instead of chopping and crushing the bean, thus keeping the bean from heating back up until you’re ready to brew. Grind according to the brewing machine you have. I like the drip method with an unbleached filter or gold wire filter. If I were drinking coffee now, it would only be organic, shade grown.”

Please join in with your coffee expertise and opinions.

‘MATER SOUPS

Ginny Gaines of Signal Mountain offered two favorite Christmas dishes, one on either end of the spectrum, everyday to special day. “One is quite different and not an expected choice for the holidays, but it suited Steve and me just fine, with all the heavy meals that one eats during all the festivities,” she says. “We had the first during one of those hectic days, and a rainy day, which we had a lot of. It’s tomato soup and served alongside a grilled cheese. It was just divine.”

Tomato Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes in puree

1/2 cup chicken broth (may add another 1/2 cup or more, to taste)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons minced fresh basil or parsley or 1 of each herb

Shredded or grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 cup V8 vegetable juice with lime, optional

Chopped summer sausage or shrimp, optional

Heal oil in saucepan. Sizzle garlic; add tomatoes and all other ingredients except Parmesan and simmer 10 minutes. Serve sprinkled with Parmesan.

Another tomato soup, this one with cream cheese, turned up in our end-of-2015 file, on the back of a previously printed recipe. The sender, Marian Willett, reported that it freezes well. Although it is a coincidence, the fact that the soup came on the heels of the Cheese Krispies suggests they just might be a good pair.

Beach Bar Tomato Soup

1/2 stick margarine or butter

1 medium onion, chopped

8 ounces cream cheese

1 quart stewed tomatoes (2 large cans and 1 regular can)

6 (10.5-ounce) cans cream of tomato soup

3 tablespoons basil

2 tablespoons garlic powder

1 quart half and half

Croutons for garnish

Shredded cheddar cheese for garnish

Melt margarine or butter and sauté chopped onion until soft.

Mix cream cheese and tomatoes in blender until creamy. Add soup, basil, garlic powder and half and half and add to onion mixture until hot. Serve with croutons and shredded Cheddar cheese on top. (Do not add milk or water when serving.)

DELISH DESSERT

Ms. Gaines’s second recipe was Christmas-dinner special. “This recipe makes one pie, but you can make two with an entire container of ice cream.” There’s a recipe for the chocolate sauce that you pour over it. The end result is “Favored by Grandchildren.”

Frozen Peppermint Ice Cream Pie

1/2 gallon peppermint ice cream

Purchased Oreo crumb pie shell

Chocolate sauce (recipe follows) or just a can of chocolate syrup

Whipped cream

Soften peppermint ice cream. Spread half of ice cream into chocolate crumb pie shell.

Swirl chocolate sauce into remaining softened ice cream, as much or as little as you like. Add to first layer. Freeze.

Serve with a dollop of whipped cream.

Let pie sit out for about 5 or 6 minutes, so that slicing is easier.

Sinful Chocolate Sauce

1 can Hershey’s chocolate syrup

1 can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated)

1 stick butter

Put all ingredients into saucepan and slowly melt butter. Stir. Cool.

May be stored in refrigerator for a week.

KRISPIE CHEESE

Linda Morris answered the cheese-wafer-with-Rice-Krispies call from Lookout Mountain. “These Cheese Krispies are one of my family’s favorite treats, so I am glad to share this very special recipe.”

Cheese Krispies

1 1/4 cups grated cheese (8-ounce pre-grated bag)

1 stick soft butter

1 1/4 cups flour

1 cup Rice Krispies cereal

Cayenne red pepper, to taste

Hot sauce, to taste

Mix cheese and butter, then add flour; gently fold in cereal. When a soft dough forms, add a few shakes of red pepper and a few drops of hot sauce to taste, and mix well. Shape into small wafers and bake in preheated 325-degree oven for 20 minutes. Do not overbake.

Chill, then slice and bake.Some bakers have luck shaping the mixture into two logs. I prefer to just sit and daydream while I’m shaping them, as they come out neater around the edges.

Yield: 55 small delicious wafers

We had an unwelcome guest at our family Christmas festivities: a nasty virus. Reading about your good cooking is enough to get me back in the kitchen again, with recipes from this column. I would assume I am not alone. Next week? Yes, let’s.