Kelly Rossiter
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On our way to the cottage earlier this week, my husband and I stopped at one of those road side stands to get some blueberries and early corn. I got a little carried away with the corn and bought a dozen ears rather than a half dozen. That's quite a lot of corn for two people to eat, especially as the flavour deteriorates so quickly after being picked. When my in-laws had a cottage, we used to buy the corn from a farmer down the road. We'd put the pot of water on the stove, phone Fred and tell him how much we needed and he'd go out and pick it then and it would go straight into the boiling water when we arrived back at the cottage. Now I soak the corn in water for an hour or so and put the whole thing on the barbeque and then husk it once it's cooked. We've done it this way for a couple of meals, so I was looking for another way of cooking it and decided to use up a few ears in a corn soup.
This soup is from the vegan cookbook Veganomicon which I've been happily working my way through. I had the required corn, and I had some yellow summer squash from the farmers' market and I could have bought the yellow pepper the recipe calls for, but I decided a little colour contrast would be nice, so I used red peppers. There's really no difference in the flavour, it was just an aesthetic decision. Of course, the whole aesthetic aspect went right out the window when I once again couldn't puree my soup here at the cottage. I'm going to have to make a big note to myself to bring the immersion blender to the cottage. The recipe calls for the peppers to be roasted in the oven, but if you have a barbeque it gives it more depth of flavour to do it that way. It also calls for a Videlia onion, but I just had regular cooking onions and I didn't have any nutmeg and it was fine. This makes a big pot of soup, so you could either make it for a crowd for a backyard get together, or cut the recipe in half.
Roasted Yellow Pepper and Corn Bisque
4 yellow bell peppers
3 cups fresh corn, cut from the cobs
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 medium sized Videlia onion, diced
3 cloves garlic
2 hot red chilis, seeded and sliced thinly
1 yellow summer squash, cut in half lengthwise and sliced thinly
3-4 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 (14 oz) can of coconut milk (light is fine)
1 tbsp pure maple syrup
juice of 1 lime, or to taste
1 whole nutmeg
1. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Cut the stems off the peppers and pull out the seeds. Place on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for about 40 minutes, turning once. The peppers should be very soft and collapsed. If you are roasted them on the barbeque, place them on the grill whole, and turn them as the skins blacken. Let them cool before removing the stem, skin and seeds. Roughly chop the peppers.
2. In a soup pot, saute the onion in the oil to 5 to 7 minutes over a medium-high heat, until softened and translucent. Add the garlic and the chilies and saute for another minute or so.
3. Add the corn and the squash and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, until moisture begins to release fom the squash. Add the roasted peppers, vegetable broth and salt. Cover and bring to a boil. Once the soup is boiling, lower the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes, covered.
4. Add the coconut milk and pure the soup, either by using an immersion blender or by slightly cooling and then transfering the soup to a food processor or blender in batches. Reheat the soup and grate the nutmeg with a microplane grater directly into the soup. Add the maple syrup and lime.
From Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero
Difficulty Level: Easy
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