Soup #19 / Tomato & Sweet Pepper Soup

When you throw a Cinco de Mayo bash and have a bunch of left overs, you can get kinda sick of all the rice and beans and carne asada. But when you have a bag of sweet peppers left over, you get to eat yummy salads, and make a soup that's got some bite! We made this one and enjoyed it hot with some toasty paninis for dipping. 

What you need: 

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 6 tomatoes, coarsely chopped
• about 15-20 sweet peppers (yellow, orange, & red - I used them all!), stemmed and coarsely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• 1/2 of one chipotle chili in adobo sauce
• 2 cups of chicken or vegetable stock
• ground pepper
• yogurt or sour cream to top
• chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley to top

How to make it:

In a large soup pan on medium heat, warm the olive oil and add in your onions. Saute until they are soft and turning clear (about 4 minutes). Turn the heat to medium -low and add in your tomatoes, peppers, garlic, the 1/2 chile in adobo, and the stock. Cover the pan partially and allow to cook for about 20 minutes, until the veggies are softened. Remove the soup from heat. 

Using an immersion blender or a regular blender, blend the soup until it's smooth. Using a ladle, spoon the soup into a medium mesh strainer over a serving dish. Use a spoon or the back of the ladle to push through the juices, leaving behind the pulp. You can discard the pulp, ORRR.... if you have some tortilla chips, scoop up some in a corn chip shell and give it a try, it's yummy! 

The original recipe from Williams-Sonoma's "Soup" suggested chilling the soup for several hours and serving it cold with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream on top. We decided to have it hot, topped with yogurt and parsley. 

The Verdict:

Success! I loved it! It was hot and sweet and smokey. Just that 1/2 chipotle chili adds quite the flavor and I liked it! We actually did try this soup chilled, and while E thought I wouldn't like it because it was similar to V8 (which I so don't like), I actually thought it was pretty good, but I did prefer it hot. It was VERY peppery.  I tweeked the original recipe and it may have been a bit more on the pepper side than the tomato side, but it was a winner in my book!

What We'd Do Differently:

I think I'd like to try it with a little bit more tomato, just to pull a bit more of that flavor into it, but really, it was great just the way it was. As you can see we topped it with yogurt, which helped tame the flavor a bit, giving each bite the right amount of flavor!

XO

P.S. I have to give major props to E, my hubby and art direct for the awesome yogurt garnish on this soup!