Sweet Potato Soup

This post has been a little delayed, as I made the soup a few days ago but am just getting to writing it down now. While we were touring colleges on the west coast we ate lunch at True Food Kitchen. One of the dishes we really enjoyed was a sweet potato poblano soup so I decided to try to replicate it. It wasn't really the same but it was still good so here's the recipe:

2 Poblano peppers, roasted and peeled, then chopped

4 sweet potatoes, peeled, cubed, and boiled

1 onion, diced

5 cloves garlic, chopped

butter

2 cups chicken stock

1 cup water

salt and pepper

cilantro

heavy cream

Sauté the onions in the butter until soft and then add the garlic, peppers and potato cubes. Sauté for a few minutes then add the stock and water, salt and pepper, and cilantro. Bring to a boil and simmer briefly. Remove from heat and cool slightly, then purée with an immersion blender. Stir in enough cream to get the consistency you want. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and more cilantro. 

In terms of making this again, for that amount of sweet potatoes I might add 1-2 more poblano peppers. You could feel the heat in your throat but it was rather subtle. 

Messy But Hopefully Worth It

Today I tackled all those peppers.  I had about 3 pounds of green and red bell peppers and 5 poblanos, mostly from the farm but a few were from my roof garden.  I didn't want to make a relish again, so I decided I might try roasting and pickling them.

The roasting part is easy enough, but the peeling and slicing is rather messy.  I kept the red, green and poblanos in separate bowls in an attempt to make nice layered arrangements with the red and green peppers.  The poblanos fit into a half-pint jar with some of the onions and garlic from the brine.  I tried to get all the others into my remaining 3 half-pint jars, and that just didn't work.  I had to switch to pint jars and I ended up with 2 pints of somewhat jumbled red and green peppers.  Oh, well!  This was from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, page 317.

I Really Ought to be Sleeping

Tonight I'm working the overnight and I need to be taking a nap.  But I figured I had some canning to do, so maybe I should tire myself out first?

The peck of apples made 4.5 quarts of applesauce - smooth with white sugar (note to self:  2.5 cups for the whole peck) which will make the 8 year old very happy.  We opened our last jar a week or so ago.  The food mill didn't give me any trouble today, either, which is nice.

I also roasted those poblano peppers.  Unfortunately a few went bad in the fridge so I didn't have as many as I planned.  But I had about 7 smallish peppers, and 2 red jalapeños, so I roasted those too.  After taking off the skins, I stuffed each poblano pepper with shredded "Mexican mix" cheese and topped them with a little more.  The jalapeños went on the edges of the dish.  I'll bake them for dinner; they'll make a nice little side dish.