Souper Tuesday: Jeremy’s roasted tomato and red pepper soup

Jeremy Freemantle is the chef and proprietor at Jeremy’s Restaurant & Wine Bar in Prince Albert in the Great Karoo. We spent the weekend there for the first of what will be annual wine festivals, the Vino Camino, which he organises. I’ll write all about that later this week, but for now, let’s dip into Jeremy’s delicious roasted tomato and red pepper soup.

The recipe requires you to roast the tomatoes and red peppers (capsicum) first, which enriches and deepens the flavour. He uses roma tomatoes, and the riper they are, the better the taste will be.

Ingredients

1kg ripe Roma tomatoes

Olive oil

1 onion, sliced 

2 cloves garlic, chopped

Half teaspoon chilli flakes (optional)

1 Tbsp smoked sweet paprika

1 x 400g can of tomato purée 

3 red peppers

½ cup of cream

Stock or water if needed

1 tsp sugar

Salt and black pepper

Method

Toss tomatoes and peppers in a little olive oil and roast in a baking tray until nicely coloured.

Put the peppers in a plastic bag to sweat and then remove the skin. Reserve the juices.

Remove skin from tomatoes and chop roughly. Reserve the juices. 

In a deep saucepan, fry the onion and garlic until soft. Add chilli flakes and paprika and fry for a minute or so. 

Add the chopped tomatoes and peppers and tomato purée and a hint of sugar and cook slowly for about 15 minutes.

If it’s too thick, add stock or water and cook through.

Season with salt and black pepper, to taste.

Allow to cool for a while and then blend with a stick blender.

Add some water if too thick.

Add cream and combine. DM

Jeremy’s: https://www.jeremys.co.za/

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.