Here’s cute little Lucia, lovin’ this tasty soup!
Creating this soup involves a few steps: you need to first roast the peppers, then blend the soups separately to have two colors to plate, and make fresh pesto to garnish. Lucia says it is all worth it!
Ingredients
4 bell peppers, 2 red and 2 yellow
1 medium-sized onion, roughly chopped
4 carrots, roughly chopped
4 celery spears, roughly chopped
2 garlic clove, roughly chopped
a generous swirl of olive oil
Tabasco, optionalInstructions
Preheat oven to 450°F
Roast the peppers in the oven by placing them directly on the top shelf, with a foil-lined baking tray on the shelf below to catch any juices that may fall. Check half-hourly to rotate the peppers so that they cook on all sides. (Here's where your kitchen starts smelling quite yummy.)
When the peppers are finished (they’ll take about 40 minutes), take them out of the oven and into a bowl. Cover tightly with a lid or plastic wrap — the peppers will finish cooking and the steam will loosen the peppers from their skins. When cool, peel them, reserving the juices to add to your soup. Place the peeled peppers in water to quickly de-seed — the seeds will sink to the bottom.
Get out your soup pot, add a few swirls of olive oil and sweat the onions, carrots, celery and garlic until just tender. Cover with water, bring to a boil and remove from the heat. Blend in 2 batches: while the first batch is going, add the peeled roasted yellow peppers. Put the blended soup into a pot. Next, the second batch: add the red peppers to this one, and pour this soup into another pot. Season both with plenty of salt and pepper, the reserved pepper juices and a shake or two of Tabasco to bring out the pepper flavor.
Serve the soup by using 2 ladles to create interesting and lovely shapes. For a yin-yang, pour the 2 soups on opposite sides of a bowl. Give a sharp, brisk tug on the edge of the bowl to encourage a yin-yang shape.
Decorate with dollops of fresh pesto — Lucia prefers a heart shape.
