Creamy Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup

I have fond memories of me and my sweetheart eating creamy roasted red pepper soup, many many moons ago, when we first met. Often, with crackers and hummus with basil on top. YUM. I’ve wanted to recreate it for a long time, and finally got to work. And like many of my recipes, this has three ingredients in it (because I can’t be bothered with any more). Easy, simple, and so absolutely delicious, you’ll want it on a regular basis like I do.

I’m all about simple recipes, but if you want to doctor this up with sautéed onions, garlic, basil, go to town! I find that it’s SO delicious and quick as is, I don’t need it changed in any way.

3 or 4 medium sized red peppers

One 28 oz can of whole, cubed, or crushed tomatoes (my favorite is fire roasted)

One 13.5 oz light coconut milk

Salt, to your taste

White beans, optional

First, you’ll want to roast the red peppers: wash them thoroughly and place on a cookie sheet. Place in the oven and roast at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes, turning the red peppers with tongs about halfway through the cooking time. Take them out and place them in a bowl, with another bowl on top ~ this loosens the skins for easier peeling. Let them steam this way for about 20 minutes, and longer is also fine. Peel the peppers, de-seed them, and put them all in a dutch oven or other heavy-bottomed soup pot.

To the pot, you’ll also want to add your can of tomatoes, salt, and the can of coconut milk. Bring to a simmer and cook on low, about 10 minutes or so. Using an immersion blender, blend the whole mixture until it’s a desired thickness. I like to serve the soup with crushed red pepper and white beans to make a whole meal.

For BLE food plan:

It’s tricky to measure this out, since it involves different sizes of peppers and also taking into account that food shrinks when cooked. To keep it simple, I typically just weight my portion of soup (say 10 ounces) and take into matter that that portion also contains my fat portion (from the coconut milk). Easy peasy. I can add in 6 ounces of white beans, and that’s a great meal! Enjoy.

Lentil Flatbread for BLE

Recently I saw a recipe for lentil tortillas, and got very excited! For 7 months on Bright Line Eating, I haven’t had any bread, so the idea of being able to wrap up a little sandwich with hummus and veggies ~ imagine, finger food! ~ was truly a welcomed one. The original recipe was pretty good, but I personally wanted to make some changes and make it even better.

1. Don’t blend with the soaking water. It tastes gross. Rinse them and use new water.

2. DO keep the container of soaking lentils in the fridge. If you keep it on the counter, it will ferment and smell pretty awful.

3. Baking them takes much less time, creates super fluffy bread, AND you can do other things rather than hanging out at the stove for a while.

4. Adding “Everything But The Bagel Seasoning” brings the recipe to a new level!

5. You can get creative - add in some caramelized onions or herbs!

Here we go:

1 cup uncooked (hard) red lentils

water

Everything But The Bagel Seasoning

Soak the lentils in water overnight. The next day, rinse well, and add to a blender. Add in about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup water (it should come up 3/4 of the way up the lentils in the blending container) and 1/2 tsp salt. Blend on high until smooth.

You’ll want to use a baking (cookie) sheet for this. The one I use is best size is 11.5 inches by 17 inches, or as close as possible. I’ve also made it on a large pizza round and that works well. It’s also best to have a lip around the sheet so the batter doesn’t come out. You can create a thin flatbread by spreading it thinly, and so the sheet size is very important.

Also, parchment paper is a must but what’s even better is a silicone Silpat sheet (like this one), or any silicone sheets you can find should be fine. I’ve found that the bread sticks to the parchment paper sometimes, but it comes clean off with the SIlpat.

Line the sheet with the parchment paper or the SIlpat, and pour out the lentil mixture in the pan. Make sure it’s all leveled (you may have to move the pan around to spread the batter) and relatively thin (about 1/4 inch).

Sprinkle with the seasoning and bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes until done. If you’re doing Bright Line Eating, I personally weigh out 6 ounces of this finished bread for my protein. Enjoy!