Tomatoe Fennel Soup

I was at a writing retreat at Strawberry Creek Lodge. Imagine the decadence of just writing, walking and having a fabulous cook prepare all the meals. Apparently writers will write through the night and show up at odd hours to eat but that was not the case on this retreat. Every one showed up for all three meals at the assigned times. I wrote in the evenings and apparently missed out on freshly baked cookies. Oh dear! I did have dessert every evening so can not really justify even one cookie. Below is a recipe the cook made for one of the meals. When I made it, I used sodium reduced chicken broth and this did not affect the flavour. One evening, a former contractor who does not have an ounce of fat on him came over for dinner. When I asked him about any allergies and food preferences he said he only ate fat free food. So I omitted the oil in the soup, cooked all the vegetables in the broth and again, the soup was delicious. When you do serve the soup, put a heaping tablespoon of plain yogurt on the soup and in the centre, place a table spoon of home made pesto. It looks so much more appealing. The original recipe came from the Oprah magazine 2008 Cookbook.

Brown the following in 2 tbsp oil: 1 chopped onion, 1 chopped fennel bulb and 3 chopped and seeded red peppers. When almost browned, add one chopped jalapeno pepper with most of the seeds removed. If you like more heat, leave in more seeds. Sit fry for 2 minutes. Add 4 cups of chicken broth and simmer for 20 minutes. Cool. Puree in batches in the blender. After all the soup has been blended, add 1 cup yogurt and taste for salt. Stir, ladle and garnish with the yogurt and pesto. You could also garnish the soup with fresh basil leaves. The soup looks like it would be tomatoe based. If is not. Great for gluten free diets and those allergic to tomatoes.