A new friend told me this week that when reading my blog she envisions me like Carrie Bradshaw, sitting at my desk writing about some fresh drama, while a montage of me cooking family dinner plays in the background. I should like to think that if I was living some wild Sex and the City lifestyle there might be a more interesting love life connected to it. There is something really magical though about the facade of social media that makes our lives look infinitely more alluring than they actually are. That’s one of the really fun and dangerous things about being a photographer: you also become a curator. I find myself constantly trying to convince strangers that my life is by no means glamorous, while curating my social media presence and telling wild anecdotes about faking my way into fancy parties. The real truth is that I spend most of my days sitting at the Who Dat Coffee Cafe in the Marigny, with a black iced coffee staring at a blank page wondering what to write and who to email so that I can continue to afford to do family dinner, and you know… pay rent. In a similar attempt to fictionalize my life, I took some overly dramatic photos of soup this week.

Tomato Basil Soup (12-14 servings):
4 tablespoons butter
2 yellow onion
8 cloves garlic
2 dried chili peppers
2 cups basil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tsp whole peppercorns
3 28oz cans whole peeled tomatoes
6 cups chicken broth
1 cup white wine

I use an 6 qt pot for this recipe, it nearly fills the pot. Half your onions, and uncase your garlic. Heat up your butter in the pot, and on medium heat sear the onion halves for about three minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another few minutes. Deglaze the pot with the cup of wine. Add in all other ingredients, and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. I cooked this for about an hour and then removed it from heat and ladled the soup into a blender to puree until smooth. I found that I needed a big bowl to transfer the puree to, since you will need to puree in 2 or 3 batches, and then return your soup to the original pot. Add more salt or black pepper if necessary. Bring back to hot when you’re ready to serve. You can add a little heavy cream if you want it to be more bisque-y.

Family dinner is a dinner party hosted at my home in the 7th ward of New Orleans every Tuesday night at 7pm for anywhere from 6 to 15 close friends and family. The event was born in search of a way to spend time with friends outside of a bar setting, tired of screaming over loud music paying too much money for bad drinks without privacy. My favorite memories with friends and family have always happened in someones mom’s kitchen. We grew up in those kitchens, chastised for eating meatballs out of the pot, or sneaking “the good cheese, reserved for guests,” when we thought mom wasn’t looking, inevitably shooed to the other side of an island or a table with a glass of wine because we were helping wrong or in the way. We would sit back and listen to family go on and on about stories of their youth. Selfishly wanting to be that mom, I began cooking for my friends and family in New Orleans, the only rule being to bring wine. It’s been about a year since I began, and though I have never thought of myself as a writer, I am most certainly a hostess, a story teller and a photographer.

This recipe is so insanely simple I honestly thought that Betsy was lying to me when I begged her for the recipe from Paladar 511 in the Marigny. She swore to me it really was just simply, olive oil, salt and basil on good local tomatoes with burrata. I have done some variation on this many times before for dinner but all have included balsamic which I can tell you now you will not miss.

When I tell you my mother has dropped dead in place reading this blog dedicated to tomatoes I am not exaggerating. I don’t think I ate a single tomato until I moved to New Orleans, granted the addition of creamy burrata cheese and Maggie Scales’ ciabatta that I have stock piled in my freezer definitely helps. The tomatoes in New Orleans in the summer are just better than normal tomatoes. I honestly don’t know how else to put this sudden change of heart that I have had on a food that I wouldn’t even touch for 25 years of my life.

I realize this is less of a recipe and more of a declaration of my new found love of tomatoes. If you’re in the New Orleans area, check out the Crescent City Farmers market for tomatoes and basil, they’re uptown on Broadway on Tuesdays which makes a perfect hop skip to the recently opened Bellegarde bakery for bread and St James for cheese to pair with. I served this last night as a prelude to the tiniest meatballs which I will be writing about soon. I will say though that these tomatoes came back out late in the evening and were completely finished.