- Our delicious fresh produce! Tomatoes, red peppers, fresh basil, and elephant garlic.
Happy Souper Bowl Sunday friends! I know my posts haven’t been super frequent lately and this will likely continue for the next 4 or 5 weeks as I’m finishing up both my holistic nutrition degree and my culinary nutrition expert program and the workload is huge! I am planning on doing one post a week, our delicious souper bowl posts for the next month or so. Once things are settled down and I no longer have to spend upwards of 20 hours/week in class + homework I will give you all so much love you won’t know what to do with it! Until then, your kindness and patience are greatly appreciated 🙂
So today’s soup is a delicious Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Basil Soup. It’s delicious and perfect for those inevitable winter sick days! I’ve had my family in town since Friday so I had to sneak my recipe testing in this morning while they were still sleeping off a very wine-heavy dinner. So our main ingredients this week are red peppers, tomatoes, and basil. Let’s take a look at some of the health benefits before getting to the good stuff, shall we?
Healthy Bites
Red Peppers: These veggies are one of the highest food sources of vitamin C around. They’re also super high in carotenoid phytonutrients, which provide them with their beautiful colour and provide an awesome antioxidant punch!
Tomatoes: Technically a fruit, tomatoes also have tons of those amazing carotenoid phytonutrients. The most famous one is definitely lycopene, which has been found to protect cells, DNA, and LDL cholesterol from oxidation. They’re also a great source of vitamins C and A that are powerful antioxidants and necessary for maintaining healthy skin and immune systems. Yay tomatoes!
Basil: This delicious herb contains health-promoting flavonoids, such as orientin and vicenin. These bad boys help protect cell structures and chromosomes from radiation and free-radical damage. Basil also has awesome antimicrobial properties and helps restrict the growth of bacteria thanks to it’s volatile oils eugenol, myrcene, and limonene. Go basil!
Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Basil Soup
Ingredients
- 3 red peppers
- 8 medium tomatoes
- 1+1 tbsp. olive oil
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 1 red onion
- 1 tbsp. maple syrup
- 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
- 2 cups broth
- 3 heaping tbsp. fresh basil, finely chopped
- Sea salt to taste
Directions
- Preheat oven to 400C
- Core and deseed the tomatoes (I didn’t do this the first time and it made for an unpleasant, seedy texture). Halve and deseed the red peppers.
- Coat with 1 tbsp. olive oil and place on baking tray in the oven for 30 minutes or until skin begins to peel and brown, flipping the veggies halfway through.
- While the peppers and tomatoes are roasting rough chop the onion and garlic.
- Simmer the onions and garlic in a saucepan with the remaining tbsp. of oil on low while waiting for the other veggies.
- Once the tomatoes are soft enough to squish with a fork, add to the saucepan and mash.
- Rough chop the red peppers. You can peel the skin off of them if you have the time or inclination, but it’s not necessary. Though the roasting should make the skin slide off easily. Add to the saucepan.
- Pour any juices that leaked out of the roasted veggies into the saucepan. I like to add a little water to the baking tray to make sure I get all the roasted flavour goodness off.
- Add maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, and broth.
- Simmer soup for 20 minutes. (Or you can simmer it as long as you’d like. Remember, soup is pretty easy going).
- Add basil for the last 5 minutes of cooking.
- Puree and serve!
Well that’s it for today friends. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful weekend. Happy eating!
Cait
