You say tomato, I say tomato

I'm going to be honest here, seeing as I've already shared the unexpected result of yesterday's soup with a few people. My intent was a roasted red pepper and pear soup, but it came out tomato. That's ok though, it was a delicious tomato!

We have had a couple different versions of roasted red pepper soup over the last month that we've really enjoyed, so I decided to give it a shot. We headed into the market after kettlebells yesterday morning. There are still loads of vendors, but unless you're looking for pumpkins, squash, cauliflower or brussel sprouts, you have to keep your eyes peeled for anything else. Brussel sprouts gave us a delightful surprise though, being one of those veggies that you've likely picked up in the frozen food aisle most of your life, you never thought about how it actually grows. Well, it's like this (thank you wiki):

Interesting eh?

We left the market sans brussel sprouts, but with some red peppers, tomatoes and ground cherries. This first ingredient was intended to help me make a successful and decadent roasted red pepper soup.

Here's how it became a tomato soup:

Into a dish I tossed 3 chopped red peppers, a chopped onion and 3 cloves of chopped garlic. This was drizzled with olive oil and put into the oven at 325 for about 25 minutes. When it smelled delicious, I took it out, and added it to the pot where I had a litre and a half of the stock that I made last week. I then added a can of Hunt's tomato and sweet onion, and a quarter of a tomato that was left over from making sandwiches. At this point I did consider that that was an awful lot of tomato, but decided not to add any more red pepper, for reasons beyond me. That pot full of goodness simmered for 10 minutes or so, then I removed from heat to puree with my trusty hand blender.

Back onto the heat it went, medium, and I tasted where we were so far. It was sharp. It needed something. I added nutmeg. Nutmeg really did the trick! Then some pepper. No salt, it didn't need any and I learned later that J had added salt to the stock before he put it in the freezer! I tossed in a peeled and chopped pear, then let it simmer at low heat until J woke up from his name.

Overall, this was a yummy soup, familiar to those days of childhood when you came in from playing outside in the snow and your mum made this for you for lunch, with a side of a grilled cheese sandwich or a pile of those premium plus crackers. Yum!