Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Soup

Oh man just yum, this is such a nice winter meal. The weather forecast says -3C tonight and although it's only 8.04pm right now I can feel it already, brrrrr. Throughout the year in New Zealand you can find capsicum (bell pepper) priced from 99c to $2.99 each depending on the time of year and availability. We have a couple of recipes that we usually make when capsicum are cheap. One is capsicum jelly (the recipe for which you will find on this blog at some stage, maybe, if you're lucky) and the other is this soup.
We were fortunate enough to be given a rather large bag of capsicums (approx a dozen) that were purchased from 'Tere's of Coromandel' for $3. Tere and his partner own what has to be one of the best fruit and vege (and other) shops that I have ever been in. It is well worth a vist and we usually pick up either a lovely gouda, an unusual and hard to find condiment or simply something we have never seen before (we first discovered the Cape Herb 'bed of Roses' lamb rub there).



8 large tomatoes
8 large red peppers (capsicum/bell pepper)
3 bulbs of garlic
Olive oil

1 litre of vegetable stock
1/3 teaspoon smoked paprika
Salt & Pepper
Avocado oil
Lite sour cream
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tin of 'Italian flavoured' chopped tomatoes

First slow roast your tomatoes, peppers and garlic. Put tomatoes in a baking paper lined roasting dish and place in a pre heated oven at 160C/320F for 30 mins.
Cut peppers in half and remove seeds/membrane. Place cut side down in a roasting dish lined with baking paper. Place in the oven with tomatoes and cook for 30 mins (the tomatoes have already cooked for 30 mins when you put the peppers in the oven).
Cut the top quarter off the top of the garlic bulbs to expose all the cloves and pour a little olive oil over them. Put in the oven with the tomatoes and the peppers (the tomatoes will have beeen in the oven for an hour already and the peppers will have been in for 30 mins). Keep an eye on the veges and swap trays around if necessary.
Remove veges from the oven, peel blistered skins off the peppers and discard. Place peppers and tomatoes in a large pot and squeeze garlic cloves out of their skins into the pot. Leave to cool.
Use a blender or preferably a whiz stick to puree the veges and garlic. Add stock and tinned tomatoes and continue to blend till smooth. Add paprika and salt & pepper, stir and heat gently until hot enough to serve.
Ladle into bowls and add a generous swirl of avaocado oil, a spoonful of sour cream and some freshly ground black pepper. Serve with hot crusty bread and a little grated parmesan if desired.