Monthly Archives: February 2011

Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Cilantro Lime Sour Cream and Roasted Corn

This soup is a dream come true. It’s Cassia‘s recipe, and we made it for the cooking class ladies last Friday before they arrived. There was going to be enough for them to do with butterflying naked chickens and chopping pounds upon pounds of brussel sprouts without adding this soup to the tasklist.

The sweet flavor of the red peppers with the depth of the onions and garlic—oooooh. Aaaaah. It’s creamy, light, and perfect in every way.

And as I discovered by accident, it’s delicious cold! Its light sweetness is reminiscent of gazpacho, and I can’t wait to serve it chilled during the summer.

Ingredients

(Serves 6)

8 red bell peppers, halved and seeded

½ cup sweet corn

2 TBS butter

1 white onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup tomato paste

6 cups chicken stock

2 cups heavy cream

1 ½ TBS cornstarch, mixed with 2 TBS water

½ cup cilantro, chopped

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 cup sour cream

½ lime, juiced

1 TBS cilantro

First things first: crank up the broiler in your oven.

Now grab those peppers and give them a nice wash. By the way, we tripled the recipe, so if it looks like we’re using waaaaay more ingredients than I listed here, it’s because we did.

Slice the peppers in half lengthwise (removing the stems and seeds) . . .

. . . and arrange them on a roasting pan with the skin sides facing up. No need to oil or season them.

Broil those sweet red darlings until the outside skin is black and crispy. This took us about 20 minutes, but the timing will vary depending on the power of your broiler and the proximity of your peppers to the element/flame. So keep an eye!

Poifect.

Oh my gosh! I said that just like my Mom. She says ‘poifect’ too–what is the world coming to? I think I’m becoming my mother.

Cassia’s method for de-skinning these little beauties involves placing the peppers in paper bags . . .

. . . and putting them in the freezer for a while–maybe 10 minutes? I wasn’t counting.

This cools them quickly so that the skin can be removed asap. However, I’ve also heard you can put them in a ziploc bag and seal it for a couple minutes to help things along. Either way, the skin must go.

Here’s a plate of naked peppers. Please avert your eyes.

Here’s a pile of red pepper guts. Please avert your eyes again.

And that’s the end of the PG-13 material! All pictures are family friendly from here on out.

Since the broiler is still going strong, spread the corn (fully drained!) on a roasting sheet:

Broil it for a few minutes, until the kernels are starting to blacken.

Put it into a bowl–this is going to be one of our two lovely garnishes.

Now it’s time to dice the onion and garlic:

Don’t worry about making it pretty or uniform since it’s all going to be blended anyway.

In a Dutch oven or large pot, melt the butter over medium low heat, and sauté the onion and garlic until soft (about 5 minutes).

While that’s cooking, roughly chop up the roasted bell peppers–they will feel a little slimy.

But also kind of cool. If you think slimy = cool, that is.

Add the tomato paste to the onions and garlic, and cook for another few minutes to take the can-like edge off the paste and give the whole shebang some extra depth of flavor.

Add the peppers to the pot and cook for a minute or two longer.

Now it’s time to pour in the chicken stock.

Bring the soup to a boil and then reduce the heat down to low; cover and simmer it for 10 minutes.

While it’s simmering, let’s assemble the lime cilantro sour cream. Mince up some cilantro nice and fine:

Squeeze the lime juice into the sour cream, and whisk until smooth.

Add the cilantro and whisk a little more (by the way, you should really use a whisk instead of a spoon–it helps give it a creamy and silky texture).

Give it a taste and add more lime juice to taste, then refrigerate it until you’re ready to serve the soup.

And back to the soup! It’s time to add the cream:

And the 1/2 cup of cilantro:

And some salt and pepper to taste:

And some cornstarch (mixed with a little water to form a slurry). Please take a horrible picture of this step, just to make me feel better.

Thanks.

Simmer the soup for about 5 more minutes to thicken it a little more. Then, grab an immersion blender and blend the soup up until it’s uniform and creamy.

You can also do this in a blender (in batches), but I really don’t want you to burn or hurt yourself, so please be careful it you do it this way!

Time to eat! Serve the soup with dollops of cilantro lime sour cream and a sprinkling of roasted corn on top.

If you’re into wine pairings, this is the wine Cassia selected to accompany the soup:

Take me home to glory, baby. This is heaven.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Cilantro Lime Sour Cream and Roasted Corn

Meant to Be

After the insanity of the cooking class on Friday, I awoke on Saturday just shy of 11am out of a dead sleep. As much as I love the occasional trip, gallivanting around Chicago and going to concerts or art shows or the movies, my ideal Saturday is spent chilling out. Recovering from the week.

It’s how Saturdays were always meant to be.

I started out with an amarula-spiked cup of coffee, and a devotional by the window.

In order not to feel like a total slob, I like to be the teensiest bit productive. That justifies the movie-watching, cookies, and pile of afghans that tend to occur later in the evening.

So in the afternoon I took a trip to the grocery store. Then I ambled home and worked on my scrapbook for a couple hours in the 2nd bedrooom while my husband graded papers for the Philosphy of Religion class he’s T.A.-ing for. It was quiet and peaceful.

I made it all the way to the end of last August–you can tell because those shots are from Family Vacay 2010. Ah, the colorful kayaks . . . ah, the quiet and sunny dock . . .

And there’s the picture I’ve been using for a header on this blog!

I came across some papers from the game of Chinese Telegraph we played during our summer vacation. They were so much fun to look at!

If you haven’t played this game, it’s a must for large groups, as long as you don’t mind getting a stitch in your side from all the laughing.

I love these two pictures of my husband’s guitar–I’m thinking of blowing them up and hanging them on a wall somewhere. There’s just something about the deep turquoise color that calls to me.

Then we did laundry . . . massive amounts of laundry. At the laundromat, where as the fates would have it, we were serenaded to the tune of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” by the plastic lion. We brought books to entertain ourselves but ended up just talking about this and that, in that comfortable way that denotes we’ve known each other for almost 10 years. 10 years–when the heck did that happen!?

We walked back as the sun was starting to go down and the air getting chilly. Back home, we festooned our living room with the drying clothes.

Then the desire to bake hit me–it’s a new impulse that I have yet to learn how to control. The result: these Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars (recipe coming next week). We mixed them up while listening to Prairie Home Companion–Garrison Keillor’s voice puts me into a lull of well-being.

Then there was some dinner–leftover brussel sprouts over rice. Yum.

When they first come out of the fridge, they stink to high heaven (just like cold cabbage), but as we reheated them with extra bacon, they became delicious-smelling once again.

Finally, we put on some music and relaxed into some fun reads.

That’s Time magazine for the man of my life . . .

(If he looks slightly frightened/surprised it’s because he was. See, I shouted really loud a millisecond before snapping this; I thought it would result in a more natural look. Sorry I scared you, honey bunches. Though it’s probably good exercise for your heart or something.)

. . . and Bon Appetit for moi.

Shock of shocks–there’s a recipe for Peanut Butter and Jelly bars!

Hey! What?? I had just made them, like 2 hours ago. I think I might have a psychic connection with their editorial staff–there’s no other way to explain it.

See that pillow?

That’s where my head was moment earlier, and was about to be again. Is there anything as comforting as the lap of a loved one? Especially when you get head and shoulder scritchies tossed in there too?

I want a thousand more Saturdays just like this one.

P.S. I think I’m a homebody.

P.P.S. Tomorrow, back to a subject of greater general interest: food! The second cooking class recipe will be up, which boasts the very long title of Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Lime Cilantro Sour Cream and Roasted Corn. But I like to simply call it “More, please.”