Olive Garden's Cream of Tomato and Basil Soup

If you go to Olive Garden's website, they offer a lot of their recipes so you can try them at home. I tried making their Cream of Tomato and Basil Soup tonight (with grilled sourdough cheese sandwhices...yum). It was great! It did take MUCH longer than the 15 minute. It took me close to an hour to reduce everything. I used a normal sauce pan. Maybe use a larger pot so it'll reduce quicker? A couple other things I tweaked:

1) I didn't have the full 2 cups of white wine. So I used what I had and then finished the 2 cups with chicken broth.

2) After I pureed it up (hint--use a hand immersible blender aka stick blender if you have it. It makes like a lot easier!) I felt like it wasn't as tomato-y as I wanted. So I chopped up a tomato we had from the garden. That helped. I think next time I do this I'll try using 2 cans of diced tomatoes instead of just one.

3) We have Basil in our garden, so we have an ample supply of the fresh herb. I don't know how dried basil would taste though. I would recommend getting the fresh stuff, if you can.

4) Taste, taste, taste! AFter it's all pureed, keep tasting and adding salt/pepper as needed.

Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 12 minutes
Serving Size: 4

Ingredients
4 Tbsp butter
1 ea small red onion, diced
2 cups dry white wine
3 cups canned diced tomatoes (or 1 12-oz can)
2 cups heavy cream
3 Tbsp fresh basil, chopped
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste

Procedures
1.MELT butter in a heavy sauce pan. Add red onions and sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Add white wine and reduce by 3/4. Add tomatoes and heavy cream, bring to a simmer and reduce by 1/2.
2.PUREE soup in a food processor. Stir in 2 Tbsp chopped basil, salt and pepper.
3.GARNISH with remaining fresh basil and tomatoes and serve.