Cream of Roast Red Pepper & Smoked Paprika Soup

Luscious smoky and sweet

I love roast red peppers and their smoky sweet flavour in all their guises and this soup takes them to a sophisticated new height. Roasting red peppers of course accentuates their flavour and although skinning and de seeding them is a bid fiddly I think the results are so worthwhile it is one of those steps really worth doing. Smoked paprika adds yet more smokiness and depth – worth a shopping trip to la Boqueria for.

Ingredients – serves 8 generously and some to freeze

20 quite fat sweet peppers (they do shrink down to nothing)
1 large chopped onion (red or white) and some olive oil to fry them in lightly
2 or three cloves of garlic
1.5 litres stock (I like chicken but a vegetable one is fine and you will not be judged for using ready made)
500 ml double cream (thats “heavy cream” in ‘Merica or “smantana dulce” in Romania)
3 teaspoons sweet smoked paprika – I like the sweet one not the hot one in this recipe
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Gadgets & Gizmos

A stick blender or blender, Fairly large saucepan, Baking tray

Plan Ahead

Roast the peppers and skin them ahead of time, freeze them and have them handy for recipes like this.

How To

Bake the red peppers at 180C on baking trays lined with aluminium foil or baking paper until they blacken. This is what gives the smoky taste. They really do need to look a bit cremated – fear not!

To remove the skins of the peppers place them in a large plastic freezer bag when still warm (this helps the skins loosen from the pepper flesh). Strip of the skins and remove the seeds. It’s a fairly messy process and depending on how seedy your peppers are you may need to hold them under running water. You should end up with pieces of red pepper flesh. Personally I prefer to have a few seeds in and not use running water because this keeps all the flavour concentrated in.

Cut the and onion into rough cubes. Finely chop the garlic. Fry gently in a little oil until the onion is just cooked (5-8 minutes) but not browned and it remains translucent. Add the smoked paprika. You want a bright coloured soup not a muddy brown colour here. Add the red pepper flesh, the bay leaves and and the stock. Simmer for 10-20 minutes until all the flavours have mixed and the soup is very hot.

Remove the bay leaves. Really! Blitzed bay leaves are bitter and horrible! Blitz the soup until it’s a thin puree like consistency. Now add the cream – here I had some really good local sweet cream I had found.

Now heat again very gently until hot. If this soup splits (the peppers might be a tad acidic but the roasting should take care of that) then add 1 teaspoon of cornflour thinned in 2 tablespoons of milk.

Serve with smoked paprika sprinkled on top or chives or a generous amount of chopped parsley. I also like it topped with (vegans look away) crispy smoked bacon or chorizo. Add your favourite bread and a glass of hearty red wine. Enjoy!

Roast tomato sauce

Its fast and faster still if made with home bottled roast tomatoes

its easy, its intense

it covers all tomato sauce bases.

Simmer meatballs in it, layer a dish of melanzane parmigiana, serve plain with home made pasta and freshly grated parmesan, pour over fried eggs, dribble across sausages and green lentils, make your best pizza ever and so on and so on. You cant have enough good tomato sauce on hand in the kitchen. There are as many different types of tomato sauce as there are cooks so here is my “go to” sauce that is fool proof when you are confronted with less than inspiring fruit and stunning when made with summery full flavour specimens.

If you want a smooth sauce (personally a bit prissy I think and smacks of baby food) then either peel and seed your tomatoes first or pass the mixture through a “mouli” (food mill). For everyday home cooking there really is no need and besides the seeds and skin is where a lot of the goodness lies.

Ingredients

4 cloves garlic

1 onion

1 kg of tomatoes or a jar of the home bottled tomatoes

Some alcohol such as left over red wine (in the rare case this might occur) or better martini, approx 300ml

1 lemon with the skin peeled in strips, juice of the lemon

Some Worcestershire sauce (optional but I like it)

How To

Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally. Oil a baking sheet that you have covered with aluminium foil (reduce washing up). Don’t bother to skin the onion or garlic. Throw the garlic, tomatoes and onion on the sheet and roast in the oven for approximately 1 hour – until the tomatoes look well cooked and start to caramelize a bit. You want the little brown caramelly bits.

If you have bottled these beauties…you just fast forward all the way here..and fry some onions and garlic in a sauce pan and add your tomatoes from the jar (do discard the rosemary as it will be bitter but the thyme is fine)

At this stage the seasoning is up to you and the final dish you are using the sauce for. I sometimes add thyme, oregano or Worcestershire sauce depending on the dish and lets be honest depending on what is in the kitchen. Let the mixture boil and then cook on a low low heat for at least 20 minutes. The sauce deepens in flavour if you can leave it an hour. Take out the bay leaves and lemon peel. Bitter blitzed up bay leaves are really disgusting. You have been warned! Blitz it all up with your blender of choice (I use the stick blender) and you are set to go.

Variations: add the onion raw at the end when you blitz for a sauce with a bit of kick “gazpacho style”. The onion is blitzed in raw and gives not only great flavor but the maximum power of the almighty onion! Both onions and garlic are cholesterol busters so don’t be shy. Onions are high in vitamin C, B6, biotin, chromium, calcium and dietary fiber and also contain good amounts of folic acid and vitamin B1 and K.

Tomato Gazpacho

Summer in a glass….

For me Gazpacho is one of “the” dishes of summer and when the Romanian tomatoes are at their ripest and sweetest what better thing to do with them. I can drink gallons of this nectar! Its a “liquid salad” of ingredients at their best and full of flavor. It’s far more important to use fresh bursting with flavor vegetables than follow an exact recipe. For example in Romania “parsley root” is abundant and this adds a wonderful celery note to the soup. Sweet cucumbers can be added too as can fresh season onions.

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