Today's recipe: Red Pepper, Onion, and Potato soup

It's still unseasonably cold here. I had decided the house needed a thorough cleaning today. A full hoovering, not just the floor but the furniture and woodwork. Then dust all the furniture and polish the wood with orange oil. Scrub the bathroom and kitchen including getting all the fingermarks and smudges off all the kitchen cabinets. I also did all the laundry and dishes. So a busy and tiring day. I needed something warm and comforting to eat for supper.

I thought potato soup would be a nice idea, but then I wanted a bit more flavour. So I dreamed up a new recipe.

I sauteed 4 chopped medium onions in a mix of butter and extra virgin olive oil. While the onions were gently cooking away in a soup pot, I diced up half a large ripe red pepper and tossed that in. Then I peeled a pile of new potatoes. They weren't the really tiny ones, sort of medium size new potatoes. I would guess I used about a pound or so. All amounts are very approximate here. Then I added salt and freshly ground black pepper and a load of dill, a good amount of basil, and a few shakes of cayenne pepper. I added water to cover all the vegetables- and enough to reach and inch or two over that. Then I covered the pot (the cover has a steam vent) and when it came to a boil, I lowered the heat and let it slowly simmer for a couple of hours.

After about two hours- I'm guessing here - I was still cleaning and let it simmer till I was done- I turned off the cooker and got out the blender. I blended the soup in 4 small batches; using the lowest speed I let it blend till it was smooth. The puree was dumped from the blender into a new smaller pot. (That's so you don't have to dump the puree back into the pot with the unprocessed soup)

Then I brought the puree up to a boil. It was perfectly (strongly) seasoned so I didn't have to add anything except a good swirl of full cream (that's heavy cream for you in the states). A reasonable amount of cream just smoothes the flavour and texture and makes the soup perfectly creamy. Voila. Soup.

Oh yes, it was delicious. I had a bowl of it with ruchbrot and butter. This soup can be frozen. I set aside the portion to freeze before I add the cream so it keeps longer. When I want to use the frozen soup, I reheat it and then swirl in fresh cream before serving.

I know this is more information than most people want, but I figure if Adam or Andrew wants to make this, I might as well give them the details now.