Roast Red Peppers with Tomatoes

 Following the Christmas holiday I went through the fridge to see what needed using up.  I hate wasting and sometimes you have so much food in over the holidays that some things get missed.

The red peppers in the veg drawer were not at their shiniest but still far from at the end. Roast peppers are always great to make, I often make them in advance, for a side dish or roast red pepper and tomato soup or pasta sauce.  The oil is also kept for a future pasta sauce.

Firstly cut the peppers in half trying to keep some of the stem intact.  Clean out the membrane and seeds and lay flat in a deep ovenproof dish.  Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Finely chop a couple of cloves of garlic ( I only used one clove but it was a giant garlic from The Isle of Wight!)

and sprinkle inside the peppers. I had a bowl of little plum tomatoes that I got in the market so these got sliced in half and put inside the peppers and around them.

Season with salt & pepper, chopped fresh basil (I used up one of those living pots of herbs on the window sill). Drizzle your favourite olive oil or rapeseed oil over the peppers and put into a moderately hot oven - 200C for about 60-75 minutes depending how cooked you like the final result.

Once cooled you can serve the peppers as a side dish especially lovely with a salad and BBQ or grilled meat.

A benefit of being a true foodie is appreciating the range of different products that go into one of my recipes: Rapeseed oil from the Borders, garlic from the Isle of Wight, thyme from Greece, Olive oil from Italy, salt from the Himalayas, basil from my window sill and more!

I am entering this post into the monthly blog round up 'Eat Your Veg' run jointly by Helen of Fuss Free Flavours and Michelle from UtterlyScrummy.

and Credit Crunch Munch hosted by Helen of Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla from FabFood4All

Sunday Soup - Roast Pepper and Tomato

It's Sunday and as usual when we stay at my father-in-laws for the weekend I like to make a soup in the afternoon.  We usually have a roast Sunday lunch so tea time we just have soup and sandwich or roll and butter.

This week I bought some of those long red peppers that usually sell for £2.00 for two in a packet but I got them at the end of the evening Friday for £0.20.  I bought three packs and today put three of the peppers into roast for the basis of my soup.

I roasted the peppers drizzled with olive oil and filled with chopped tomatoes (home grown so free) and chopped garlic, salt and pepper.  They roasted in the oven at 160o for about 45 minutes then turned up to 200o for 15 minutes to caramelize the edges.

To start the soup I used the oil from the pan of peppers to gently fry the onions, carrots, rainbow chard stems (chard from the allotment) and when they started to brown I added the tomatoes chopped up, the peppers chopped up and the rainbow chard.

I added water and let the mixture simmer until the carrots were tender then seasoned with some chilli paste from Mexico, tomatoe puree, salt&pepper and let it continue to simmer for about half an hour.

 

A quick wizz up with the stick blender and a delicous bowl of nutritious, tasty food which didn't cost very much at all.  We had it for tea with bread and butter and FIL has two portions for his freezer for another day.

Add a glass of red wine and the perfect way to finish the weekend!