About six months ago, we came up with a "maui onion" soup for Amasia thinking that if we are going to open in maui, we need to have at least one dish that features the onion. What happened was an unusual attempt, using dashi and stewing Hamakua Springs tomatoes in there, along with the onion, parmesan, garlic croutons, garlic and some mozzarella, cooking it up like a French onion soup. It took on two or three more versions since then, and this is the latest. This one, however, has no onions, and it uses yellow tomatoes from Ho Farms instead. It is still delicious and gooey. What I really wanted to do today was fry up a sunny side up egg and put it on top of the soup just like I did with a garlic soup a while ago. Soups remind me of Andre Soltner, my old chef from Lutece. He would always call himself a "soup merchant." He would always say he was a skilled craftsman. He would make the soup at Lutece almost every day. In contrast, Christian, our chef de cuisine, was from Paris, and he would always jokingly say, "soup is for the farmers." I guess that is why I love soup so much.
~AW