If you want to up your soup game, this recipe is what you are looking for. With its bold and aromatic flavours, this soup is definitely going to keep you warm as the days get shorter and the nights grow colder.
I absolutely love soup. To me, it’s one of the most comforting dishes ever. When the temperature starts to drop, I begin making soup on a regular basis and I carry on making it all the way through Winter to at least the beginning of March. I find it to be such a versatile dish to make as well. Normally, you can even freestyle it, adding leftover veggies and scraps that would otherwise go to waste. It’s just the most amazing thing.
Yet, sometimes, I want to break the rut of an “easy soup” and go for something a bit more flavourful and elaborate. And that’s when the idea of this soup came about. I recently used some harissa paste in a Moroccan stew, and I thought that similar flavours to the ones I had just created could work really well in a soup.
It is all about balance, in food. For this reason, I decided to mix the heat of red bell peppers, harissa paste, and chilli powder with the sweetness of roasted garlic, cinnamon, and sweet potatoes. I was also curious to experiment with chickpeas and goat's cheese, two other ingredients that I associate with northern African food culture. I had entertained the idea of roasting the chickpeas as well and use them as croutons, or to simply add a can of them to the pot. But then I decided to make some hummus and spread a thick layer of it on some nice crusty bread to dip in the soup as I was eating it, and it was life changing! Seriously, good-bye butter or melted cheese, that’s how I am accompanying my soups from now on!
For what concerns the goat’s cheese, I first tried to sprinkle it on top whilst plating the soup but it wasn’t doing anything for me. The cheese would simply become clumpy and not add a lot of flavour. So the second time, I added a couple of tablespoons in the soup whilst cooking it, steering well and making sure it was fully melting and incorporating into the soup, and I was so much happier with the result. The sharpness of the goat's cheese really elevates this soup and, although you can skip it if you want to keep this soup plant-based, I would highly recommend you try it.
Let me be honest here: this is the best soup I have ever made. The flavour complement each other, making it not too sweet or too spicy. It's just perfect.
Sure, it is slightly more complicated that your average soup. Unlike other soups, this is not the typical dump-everything-in-and-simmer kind of dish. It needs the red peppers and the garlic to be roasted for about 25 minutes before you can transfer everything into a pot on the stove and relax. But it is so worthy! This could also be a great meal-prep option: I can imagine making extra batches of this soup on a rainy Sunday and then eat it throughout the week or freezing it, in order to have it at hand when you need it most.
Because, believe me, you will need it.
Ingredients:
Serves 4
2 large sweet potatoes
2 large red bell peppers
1 small garlic bulb
2 tbsp soft goats cheese
1 red onion
1 veg stock cube
1 heaped tsp harissa paste
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cumin
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp chilli powder (or cayenne powder) – add more if you like it spicier
Optional:
Nice, crusty bread
Homemade or store-bought hummus
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 210°C.
Place each red bell pepper in a tin foil sheet, both halves skin side up and cover with 1 tablespoon of olive oil each. Wrap each foil sheet and place the peppers on a baking tray. With a knife, cut the top of the garlic bulb, making sure to cut the top of each clove. Peel the exterior skin of the bulb but make sure that all the cloves are still attached together. Place the garlic bulb in another foil sheet, cover with 2 tsp of olive oil and seal. Place the garlic bulb on the tray along with the red bell peppers and roast in the oven for about 25 mins.
In the meantime, roughly chop the red onion and sauté it with some olive oil along with the cinnamon, cumin, nutmeg, harissa paste, and chilli powder. Add a splash of water to loosen the texture and ensuring the spices don’t burn. Once the onion starts to soften remove from the heat.
Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into bite-size chunks. Add them to the pot and stir well with a spoon, coating the sweet potatoes in the spice mix.
After the red bell peppers and the garlic bulb have finished roasting, take them out of the oven, unwrap the tin foil “pockets” and let them cool down for about ten minutes or until they are cool enough to handle. Once they have cooled down, squeeze the garlic bulb into the pot. Peel the skin off the red bell peppers and then cut them in rough chunks. Add those to the pot as well.
Add a veg stock cube to the pan along with about 800 ml of water (or enough water to just cover the vegetables). Bring to a boil, then lower the heat, cover and simmer for about 25 mins, or until the sweet potatoes are soft. At this point add 2 tbsp of goat's cheese, mix well and cook for another minute or so.
Remove from the heat and then blend everything with an immersion blender. If you are using a jug blender, wait for the soup to cool down before blending and then return to the pot to reheat. Serve with some bread and hummus (it’s the dream combo).
This soup can be stored in the fridge for up to three days or frozen for up to two months.
Enjoy!
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