Roast tomato and red pepper soup

This is a favourite and a really good way to use up tomatoes or peppers that might be getting a bit too old for salads.

Cut tomatoes in half and roughly chop the peppers – I usually use red and/or yellow, but have used green in the pic below which worked just as well. Pile in an a peeled onion in chunks and a few cloves of garlic. Add salt, pepper, a bay leaf if you’ve got one and a good slug of olive oil.

Pop it in the oven at about 100 – 120 C for about an hour – they just need to roast slowly so that they soften and all the juices mingle together.

Just out of the oven – roast tomatoes and peppers with onion and garlic

Pour out the dish into a large pan and add about half a pint to a pint of stock (depending on how thick you like your soup). Now’s a good time to add some herbs – fresh basil if you’ve got some or any of the Mediterranean herbs. As I’m writing this, I’ve just thought that it may be good to have roasted a few cubes of chorizo in with the veg.

Anyway, heat the pan and give the tomatoes a squeeze with the back of the spoon as you stir. Liquidise the whole lot now and pass it through a sieve into a clean pan – easy to do, just pour out in batches through a seive, using the back of a spoon to push the mix through. If you don’t have a liquidiser, take a potato masher to the pan to break things up before passing through the sieve. If you leave out the adding the stock stage, it’s makes a lovely tomato sauce.

Smoosh the mix through the sieve with the back of a spoon

Taste the soup for seasoning to see if you want to add any more salt and pepper, or perhaps a dash of Tabasco. It’s ready to eat now but if you want to make it thicker, let it simmer gently to reduce. If it’s too thick, add a little more stock.

This serves two as a lunch with a bit of parmesan grated over the top – probably serves four as a starter and it also freezes well.