Roasted Pepper Soup

As the Starks would say: Winter is coming. And in my house that means one thing: soup!

This is a relatively simple soup recipe but it is still very tasty. I used shallots but you could just use onions instead. This soup uses a couple of potatoes to bulk it up; I cooked the potatoes in the stock to be included in the soup, so as to retain the starch for thickness. The resulting soup was very thick (how I like it) but if you prefer a thinner soup, or you want it less starchy, you could cook and drain the potatoes before adding to stock, or use slightly more stock.

Serves 2 as a main course

Ingredients:

3 Peppers
400g shallots or onions
250g potatoes
1 pint (approx 600ml) vegetable stock
pinch nutmeg
salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C/400 degrees F/Gas mark 6

1. Remove seeds from the peppers and slice thickly. Peel and halve the shallots/onions. Place in roasting dish with a generous helping of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes until cooked and browned.

2. Meanwhile, peel and chop the potatoes roughly, and cook in 1 pint of stock until soft. If using a hand blender to blend, use a pan large enough to fit the peppers and shallots in once done.

3. Once the peppers are cooked, transfer to the potato pan, along with any juices and excess oil. Blend together until smooth (I used a hand blender for convenience). Add a pinch of nutmeg, season with salt and pepper as needed, and serve.