Roasted Red Pepper Bisque

One of my housemates brought home a huge crate of red and yellow bell peppers yesterday afternoon, right as i was getting ready to prepare dinner.  So given the current weather conditions, the first thing that came to my mind was roasted red bell pepper bisque.  This creamy, full-flavored soup was great for a cold winter night, and roasting the peppers gave the whole house a nice sweet pepper smell.  

Here's how it worked, for about 11 servings:

I quartered and removed the stems from 6 med-large red bell peppers, and laid them out (skin side up) on a cookie sheet.  And then placed them in the oven (which I had conveniently already heated to about 450 degrees).

While those were roasting,  I cut up two decent sized yellow onions,  and three med sized carrots, and cooked those in a skillet with some olive oil, until the onions started to caramelize.  

Meanwhile, I took a large pot, and made up about 5 1/2 or 6 cups of veggie broth.  We were out of Better Than Bouillon,  so I just used some powdered vegetable bouillon, and it worked fine.

After the peppers had been roasting for around 30 minutes (i don't really know how long, i just checked on them periodically, I'd guess about 30 minutes), I removed them from the oven.  And when the onions and carrots were done, I added those to the broth (which was already simmering).  I then cut up the peppers into smaller chunks, and put those in the broth, and let it all simmer for another half hour or so while I worked on other things.  

After that had a chance to cook together for a while,  I got out the old blender, and blended it all together till it was nice and smooth.  I've seen several recipes for bisque that want you to then strain the soup so it's completely smooth,  but I like the textures and such, so I did no straining.  

I returned all of that to my pot and left it on low heat,  then, maybe 15 or 20 minutes before dinner time, I added to that the most magical of all ingredients: coconut milk.  I'd like to think that this soup tasted so good because I did such a good job of making it,  but let's be honest here,  anything with enough coconut milk tastes good.  

Instead of coconut milk, if you aren't worried about being vegan friendly, you could use sour cream, heavey cream, Crème fraîche, yogurt, milk, soy milk.  Some of the thinner creamy things you might want to thicken a bit with cornstartch, however.  Coconut millk, in my opinion, will give it the best flavor.  After adding the cream, I added some more seasonings, to taste, and voila.

I served this meal with a romaine lettuce, baby spinach and apple salad, and made french baguettes to go with it all (if you ask me, it's not really soup, unless you have fresh baked bread to go with it).

Breakfast for Dinner

In continuing with my sausage experimenting, yesterday some friends and I made breakfast for dinner.  

So i tried my hand at making breakfast sausage.  This used about a cup of TVP, and a cup of water to reconstitute it.  Then i mixed in about a little less than a teaspoon of sage, a little more than a teaspoon of thyme, some red chili flakes, and a little bit of ground chilies.  Also salt and pepper, and some soy sauce.  

I originally made them into patties, using some egg and flour,  but, while the spices were quite good,  it just wasn't good enough to be eaten on its own, so i decided to break it up and fry it a little more and make sausage gravy.  

So for dinner, we had biscuits and sausage gravy, and scrambled eggs.  My friend Roselyn, however, did not get the memo that this was "breakfast for dinner", and instead thought that the theme was "things you put gravy on" So we also had mashed potatoes.  And yes,  she's mashing those potatoes with a pastry cutter.  

It ended up being a great meal for a lazy Sunday evening, even if perhaps it was a little high in starches, and a bit lacking in green things.

Sticky Rice Balls

I've been inspired by hearing about fun food creations that others are sharing on the internet, so I've decided to start displaying some of my own.  I might switch this over to a separate blog, at some point, but we'll see if i continue to do it.  

These are some sticky rice balls with a spicy orange dipping sauce I made for a potluck last week.  In the middle they contain julienned carrots and apples, and I sprinkled them with sesame seeds.  The sauce is made from orange juice, a hot chili sesame oil and rice wine vinegar.  Then I spiced it up with some cayenne pepper, cumin, and red chili flakes, and thickened with cornstarch.  I also made an alternate dipping sauce based on soy sauce with other spices.  

They were a big hit, but a bit of work to make.  The first plate full i made didn't turn out too pretty, then i figured out if i kept my hands really wet, the sticky rice wouldn't stick to my hands, and it would stick better to itself.  If i make it again, I might try different veggies for a filling, and I'll toast the sesame seeds.  And maybe cook the rice in a broth of some sort, to give it more flavor.