Roasted Red Pepper Soup + Sambal and Cinnamon

At lunch on Friday, I saw a friend eating a bowl of thin, bright, gorgeous red pepper soup, and it looked so perfectly spicy, so very fall, that I swore I was going to make something like it this weekend. It helped that peppers are still at the markets -- actually, I was surprised by the amount of produce still going strong right now -- so we picked up a dozen red peppers from Whitton Farms for this, a Moroccan spin on red pepper soup.

Roasted Red Pepper Soup + Sambal and Cinnamon

12 small roasted red peppers

1 white onion

6 cl0ves of garlic

1/2 cup of white wine (We used chenin blanc.)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tbsp. sambal

1 peeled tomato

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 tbsp. garbanzo bean flour

1 capful of vinegar

squeeze of honey

1 vegetable bouillon cube

sea salt and crushed black pepper

Roast the peppers right on the grill and wait until the skin blackens. Take them inside to cool and then peel off all the char under running water and pull out the stems and seeds. For the soup, chop thin slices of onion and sauté them (in a soup pot on medium-high) in olive oil until they're soft and starting to turn brown. Add the garlic, white wine, cinnamon, and sambal. Reduce until thick and syrupy. Chop the peeled tomato and add it to the mix.

Now push everything in the pan to the side and add a tbsp. of olive oil and garbanzo bean flour to the middle. Toast it up like a roux. Add vinegar and honey, salt and pepper, and all the prepared peppers. Add 2 cups of water and the bouillon to the mix. Carefully blend the soup with an immersion blender. Taste it to check the seasoning before it's set to serve. (Yesterday we added local goat feta on top, some julienned peppers and English cucumber, and a slice of Sherri's honey whole wheat bread with sunflower seeds. A grilled cheese sandwich might be pretty great with it, too.) This is a versatile recipe. We served the leftovers as a roasted red pepper dip along side some rosemary and white bean hummus.