Roasted red pepper and tomato soup with quinoa and thyme

I’m not really into the whole “New year, new you” clean eating, guilt free thing. Eating clean just makes no sense, and thinking of food as ‘dirty’ just seems to me like a fast track to a really unhealthy and damaging relationship with food, and being someone who is really boring to talk to at parties.

That being said…

I am trying to think a bit more about what I eat. Like what makes me feel bloated and ill, and why however much pasta I eat I am always hungry about an hour later. So I’m trying to find ways to make quinoa more interesting, because it really is more filling and less bloating. And then I can read articles like this one about the quinoa industry’s affect in Peru, to remind myself that we can’t win, and everything is terrible.

  

I’m also making an effort to stop throwing so much stuff away, like disposable coffee cups and food. I bought some little plastic tubs so that I could freeze soup and curries and things in relatively small portions. This means that when I cook at the weekends I don’t need to eat the same thing every day for a week, and the freezer is filling up with tasty homemade things that I can surprise myself with when I don’t feel like cooking.

This soup was thick and warming and absolutely delicious, totally worth the effort of the additional roasting stage. It is also really filling. I am so pleased that I have little frozen portions of it for the cold grim days coming up in the next few weeks.

Serves about 6

Ingredients

5 red peppers

6 medium sized tomatoes

3 cloves garlic (skin on)

1 large onion, diced

5 ish sprigs of thyme

150g quinoa

1 tbsp olive oil

Sea salt/ course salt

About 20g butter (or just use a little bit more oil – butter is great though)

1 flat tbsp/1 cube vegetable or chicken stock powder

Ideally sherry vinegar, if you don’t have use white wine vinegar or cider vinegar

1 tbsp crème fraîche (or vegan equivalent)

Freshly ground black pepper

Serve with croutons, toasted almond slivers or toasted pumpkin seeds

Method

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.

Cut the peppers and tomatoes in half, and arrange the peppers skin down, tomatoes skin up on a roasting tray. Arrange about half of the thyme sprigs among the veggies. Hide the cloves of garlic under the pepper shells to stop them burning. Sprinkle a bit of salt on the tomatoes. Roast for 30-40 minutes.

After the veggies are roasted, pinch their skins off as soon as they are cool enough to handle, and peel the garlic cloves. Roughly tear or shop the peppers into strips. Discard the thyme twigs.

During the veggie roasting/cooling stage, and heat the oil and butter in a large saucepan on a low heat and sauté the onions for 5 – 10 minutes until softened and translucent. Put the kettle on while the onions are cooking so that hot water is ready for the next bit.

Add the quinoa to the pan and pour in enough hot water to cover, plus a bit more so the liquid rises about 3 cm above the quinoa and onions. Be a little hesitant with the water, its easier to add more water later rather than dealing with too much liquid. Add a generous pinch of salt and bring to the boil. Put the lid on and simmer for about 10 minutes. Then add the garlic, tomato, pepper, and any remaining roasting pan juices, more water if it needs it, and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Blob the crème fraîche into the soup and blitz with a hand-blender until it is silky and thick. Then add the leaves from the remaining thyme sprigs, about 1 tsp of vinegar and a grind of black pepper. Taste, and add more seasoning if it needs it.

Yum

Sri Wasano’s Infamous Indonesian Quinoa Salad

Quinoa is one of my new magic ingredients. Making this dish was actually the first time I have cooked it, as with many other trends (such as leggings), I always seem to be a bit late to the party. But oh wow how brilliant it is. According to Wikipedia quinoa is a pseudocereal that is more related to beets, spinach and tumbleweed than other grains – messes with your head doesn’t it? What this means is that while you can cook it and use it in recipes just like its grainy equivalent (eg. Risotto, stuffed peppers) it is low carb, high protein, gluten free and kosher for Passover (not kitniot either).

This recipe comes from Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook – I have mentioned before how much I love this book. In fact, it was my first ever cookbook. Its vegetarian, interesting and wholesome recipes, with hand-drawn illustrations and a whimsical style of prose.  I have tried this recipe before with brown rice as the recipe suggested, but actually I think I preferred it with quinoa – what it also has, which quinoa needs, it a whole lot of dressing. Quinoa tends to get pretty dry, but this salad does not, even on day two. The Indonesian style flavours are fantastic – the pineapple, chilli, garlic, soy combinations creates an incredibly complex flavour, with much more depth than the standard Chinese style sweet and sour.

If you do not have American cup measures, use a teacup. This recipe will give about 4 – 6 servings. I have scaled down the oils a little bit in the dressing.

2 cups quinoa

4 cups water

For the dressing –

¼ cup flavourless oil

2 ½ tbsp sesame oil (optional)

½ cup orange juice (I didn’t have this, and 1/3 cup lime juice instead)

1 or 2 medium cloves of garlic

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp soy sauce (or a little salt)

½ tsp crushed red pepper (I used 1 crumbled, dried birds eye chilli as they are pretty powerful, but I probably should have used 2 – this salad needs big flavours)

2 tbsp rice vinegar (or vinegar suitable for passover)

1 cup chopped fresh pineapple/ canned in juice (I used the canned variety, and added about ½ a cup of the juice)

For the salad –

3 finely sliced spring onions (whites and greens)

2 finely sliced stalks celery

1 can water chestnuts, thinly sliced (optional - I didn’t have these)

1 big handful beansprouts (not for passover)

1 cup roughly chopped roasted, salted, cashews

Put the quinoa in a large saucepan, bring to the boil and simmer with the lid on for approx. 10 minutes, and then leave off the heat with the lid on for another 5 – 10 minutes.  While the quinoa is cooking assemble the dressing ingredients in a large bowl, and add the hot quinoa directly to the dressing bowl and mix well. It will look like that there is way too much dressing to absorb, but don’t worry it will. Cover and leave to cool. Don’t add the rest of the salad ingredients until just before you are ready to serve it, so that everything stays fresh and crunchy.