Roasted Pepper Soup with Olive Cornbread
A silky, smoky roasted-pepper soup, slicked with good oil, and a wedge of warm cornbread shot through with olives to dip into it. Comfort food with a Mediterranean accent.
Sweet roasted peppers and salty olives are a classic pairing; here the peppers go into a smooth soup and the olives into the bread beside it.
The soup
Roast red peppers (and a tomato or two) until blackened and sweet; sweat onion and garlic in plenty of olive oil; blend it all with stock until silky; finish with a swirl of good raw oil and a little smoked paprika. Salt carefully.
The olive cornbread
Make a basic cornbread batter (cornmeal, flour, baking powder, egg, buttermilk, a good glug of olive oil) and fold in a handful of chopped pitted olives — a black Kalamata or green, with a little chilli and corn kernels. Bake until golden.
Use olive oil in both, two ways. In the cornbread it replaces butter, keeping the crumb moist and giving a savoury depth that pairs with the olives. On the soup, a raw swirl of good, peppery oil at the table is the finishing flourish — it floats on the surface, you taste it first, and it lifts the whole bowl. The olives in the bread mean you can keep the soup itself gently seasoned and let the bread bring the salty punch.