Making Soup

Tomato-Red & Poblano Soup

Tomato-Red & Poblano Soup garnished with diced peppers and coriander cress

For my soup making assignment, I decided to make a Tomato-Red & Poblano Pepper soup. I decided to make this because I like a bit of spice in a soup. The ingredients used are onions, confit and raw garlic, poblano peppers, red peppers, canned tomatoes, roasted tomato and red wine vinegar. The process of making the soup was simple; the red and poblano peppers where charred over an open flame, seeded and sliced, onions were sliced, garlic was confit in oil and the tomatoes were preserved. The ingredients where then cooked together and pureed. I put the puree back into the pot so I could still season it with red wine vinegar and salt & pepper while it was still hot. The soup tasted generally spicy because of the poblano peppers but was never overpowering. It also had a bit of a smokey flavor because the peppers where charred over a gas flame and there was even bit of sweetness because of the confit garlic. Overall I found the flavors to be well balanced and well executed. I ate the soup with one other person who found it to be too spicy for their taste but that can easily be adjusted with cream. A challenge I had with making it was the timing of when I would add everything because I had to keep the raw garlic moving in the pan to keep it from burning and to keep it from getting bitter but I also had to get all the other ingredients hot but not burned. I had to be quick but it did work out. If I were to do it differently I would have cooked the garlic and onion separately and added it to the hot tomatoes and peppers and then puree. I thing that might have mad the process a bit less stressful. From this I learned a bit about the ingredients I was using because I do not normally cook with poblano peppers. I am more used to getting spice from habanero peppers and jalapenos and I was surprised because the poblanos turned out to be hotter than expected. In the future I will be using poblanos more often. I cannot take full credit for this soup because I did not write the recipe. Overall I enjoyed this assignment because without it, I probably wouldn't have had this soup as I do not make soup that often. I learned a bit about my ingredients and the whole soup-making process.