20090611

Would I leave you hanging??

Here it is. The promise made good from the last entry.

Just to recap, here's where we started:
3 peppers (red, yellow, orange) and a container of grape tomatoes. The tomatoes halved, the peppers just the way they are. Drizzle the tomatoes and peppers with a little bit of oil (olive or the type of your choosing). Smear it all over the peppers, and sprinkle everything with some coarse salt and pepper.
Stick them in the oven at 325-350. Do something else.

An hour or two later, take a look. You should see something like this:
Peppers all soggy and deflated, tomatoes getting shrivelly and sweet. If it doesn't look like this, put them back and wait 20 minutes, then check again. When the peppers look like this, pull them out and put them in a bowl cover tightly with plastic wrap, and busy yourself with trying not to eat all the tomatoes.
Once the peppers are cool enough to touch, pour the juice that has accumulated in the bottom of the bowl through a strainer into the blender caraffe. Then, peel and seed the peppers. This will hurt. Running them under cold water helps. Once they're all peeled and the seeds are out, dump them in the blender with the aforementioned juices. Spin it all together until it makes a nice puree.
With the blender running, add in the majority of the tomato halves. I left out about 6. Maybe it was 8. Whatever. Don't judge me - slow-roasted tomatoes are the best thing on earth.

Heat a saucepot with a tablespoon of oil and a tablespoon(ish) of butter. Throw in a very small onion, chopped. Seriously, if this onion is any bigger than a baseball -- ANY BIGGER -- cut it in half and wrap up the other half. In fact, if it's one of those softball-sized monstrosities Rachael Ray always manages to find, use a quarter. We're going for flavor base, not onion soup.
Let the onion get a little see-through in the butter/oil mix before adding in a pinch of salt, and about a tablespoon of cumin, a teaspoon of garam masala, a teaspoon of tumeric, and half a tablespoon of dried oregano. Ok, I'm making up these measurements. But it's reassuring, isn't it? Basically, you'll be able to smell when it's right. If you can't, then taste it, and re-season. The measurements just make it look all safe and credible.
When you've got a nice base of flavors and your onions are soft, add in the pepper/tomato puree. Then, add about 2 and a half cups of chicken stock. I added almost all of a 26-ounce container, so I'm estimating. Roughly. Stir, and let it come to a bubble. Simmer until the flavors taste nice. I added about a tablespoon of hot sauce because it needed a little something. Go with your senses.
Because if you do, you'll get this:

I topped it with a little of the leftover avocado cream from last night's wonderment. It was pefect. Creamy, cool, nice and basic to the slightly acidic tang of the soup.

You can make this. It's easy. And it doesn't take all that long. Try it on a Saturday. I promise, you can do this.


3 comments:

  1. I approve. Variations of this need to join the soup rotation.

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  2. I've roasted peppers and tomatoes for pasta, but somehow it never occurred to me to do this with soup. Even after trying Trader Joe's roasted red pepper soup. *facepalm*

    Right. One for the list when I am back in my own kitchen, and can stick-blend to my heart's content.

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  3. Oh god please cook for me <3

    ReplyDelete