Hungarian-Style Red Pepper Bisque

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...I love soups that are made with roasted red or yellow peppers. They are a wonderful way to spruce up a sandwich lunch and they pack a flavor punch that is hard to beat. I don't make them often because the soups require a lot of peppers and the red and yellow varieties are usually quite expensive. Usually! I made an early stop at the grocers on Easter Sunday to buy greens for our holiday salad. While I was in the produce aisle I literally tripped over a large box of red peppers that were being sold 4 for a dollar. I grabbed a large bag and picked the best peppers in the box and took them home with me. The following day I roasted them for use in soup and kept the rest to use as part of antipasto platter. This is the easiest of my pepper soups to make and it is one that I really enjoy. I usually double the recipe when I make it and freeze the extra batch to serve on one of our gray and rainy days. I chose this recipe because we were going to have Welsh rarebit and the version I make is spooned over a seeded rye bread. I thought the paprika and caraway seed used in this Hungarian-style recipe would be a better match for the rarebit than a Spanish variety might. If you are skilled with a knife or have a food processor, you can have this soup on the table in less than an hour. It will keep in the refrigerator for 3 or 4 days, and it can be frozen for up to three months. The soup contains no cream and potatoes, rather than flour, are used to thicken it. I do hope you'll give the recipe a try. Here is how the soup is made.

Tapas - Picantes Pimientos Asados (Spicy Roasted Peppers)

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...This is, arguably, one of the easiest of all tapas dishes to prepare. It has the added advantage of being one that can be made well ahead of serving and I really think you'll enjoy the Spanish version of roasted peppers. Because less vinegar is used in their preparation, the peppers are not as harsh as their Italian counterpart and I think you'll find many uses for them as you become more interested in Spanish cooking. In Spain, the peppers are charred over and open flame, and while many cooks use that methodology, I prefer to roast, not broil, peppers in the oven. It's a much cleaner way to blister them and it frees the hands for other tasks. Once skin, ribs and seeds have been removed, oven roasted peppers freeze well and the homemade variety is much cheaper than any commercial product you may find. I do hope you'll give this recipe and roasting technique a try. Here is how the tapas version of spicy roasted peppers are made.