Soup season is well and truly upon us. I recently bought a new cook book devoted entirely to soups but so far I haven’t even glanced at it. I work on the basic principle of cook a vegetable or two, add stock, blitz it with the stick blender = Soup! Most vegetables are better for a bit of roasting I find. Especially peppers (yum, yum, yum!). Tomatoes and garlic aren’t too shoddy either! Eat this soup with hunks of well buttered bread for a lovely, warming lunch time pick me up.
Serves 4 as a starter (or makes 2x500ml flasks for taking to the office)
2 red peppers, halved and deseeded
~5 vine tomatoes, quartered and deseeded
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 small onion, diced
1 pint hot vegetable stock
– Preheat your oven to gas mark 6, 200C while you do your pepper and tomato prep. You want to get rid of all of the seeds.
– Place the peppers, tomatoes and garlic in a large roasting dish and coo in the oven for 30 minutes.
– In the meantime heat some olive oil and a knob of butter in a large pan on a medium to low heat until just getting foamy.
– Add the onion and a generous sprinkling of salt and gently sautee until soft.
– When your vegetables are done take them out of the oven and chop them up a bit.
– Add them to the pan.
– Add the stock.
– Use a stick blender to blend the soup until smooth with no lumps.
– Bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes. Season to taste (another generous sprinkle of salt and a good grind of black pepper does the trick. You could also add some dried basil if you wanted.)
– Serve hot.
Variation
I live alone and I often say that boredom is the mother of invention. I didn’t want to eat this soup two meals running, no matter how delicious it was, so instead I took half the soup to work in a thermos and to the second half I added half a tub of marscapone and shredded some mozzerella in there as well and heated it all up. Then I tipped it over cooked pasta. Voila! A whole new meal! This served two so I spread it over two dinners.
