Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Portobello Mushroom Panini

If you read my wife's blog, she is the ultimate soup maker in the home.  Really, the only soup I make is chili and that's not really classified under soup.  Chili is it's own category.  If you want to learn how to make chili, read down on the blog from earlier...

However, with the roasted red pepper soup, you must roast the peppers.  Michelle leaves that up to me, so I'm going to share with you how to roast the peppers for this soup, then you can hop on over to her blog to see how to finish it off. 

Then I will share with you the Portobello Mushroom Panini with red onion, basil and provolone cheese.  Very simple, but oh so good.

First off you will need 4 red peppers.

Take a cookie sheet and line it with foil, then drizzle just a little bit of olive oil on the peppers. Then with your hand, rub the oil all over the peppers.

Put the oven on "Broil" and place the peppers in the oven and wait.

Keep an eye on the peppers.  They need to turn black basically.

When the tops get charred, take some tongs and turn them. Keep doing this until the entire pepper is black.  It should look something like this.

I know, it looks like you burned them, but don't worry.

Immediately take them off the sheet and place them in a large mixing bowl and saran wrap the top, trapping all the air in.  This is called sweating the peppers. 

Basically what this does and helps the skins come off of the peppers.  Keep them in this bowl for about 15 minutes. Now it's the fun part.  Take the peppers out of the bowl and onto a cutting board.  Open the pepper up (they will still be hot, so be careful) take out all the seeds, the stem and pinch off all the skin of the pepper.  It should peel off pretty easily.  You are now left with a soft, sweet red roasted pepper!

Cut them into pieces and place them in the stock that Michelle will explain and blend it all together.

Next, let's talk panini's! I know I've already mentioned how much I love sandwiches and if you like mushrooms, this is where it's at.  It reminds me of the portobello sandwich that Panera used to have.  That was my inspiration.  First, in a skillet add olive oil and a slice of red onion. Start sautéing that down and add the portobello mushrooms.  They can be the big ones or the baby ones, doesn't matter. Once they are cooked down, add a splash of balsamic vinegar and fresh basil.  You can do the dried, but the fresh is so much better. 

Once they are all cooked down, remove from heat and add some seasoned salt (be careful not to over season, i've done that before, no bueno). I used Michelle's famous sourdough bread that she makes and put the mixture on the bread, put a slice of provolone cheese on top, closed the bread and throw it on the panini press.  And Enjoy!

Now go read Michelle's Blog!