Warming roasted squash and pepper soup recipe

This is about as simple as soup recipes get and it's utterly delicious - or at least it is if you use a nice, sweet squash to make it with. The squash is responsible for the majority of the flavour. I made this one with a squash someone I know brought me that grows in her home country of Bulgaria. I've no idea what the squash is called, but wow, it was deliciously sweet and I'll be growing more next year from the seeds. Cross your fingers for me that it'll grow equally well in the UK.
The soup would also work well with my winter squash sweet dumpling (the pretty squashes behind the bowl of soup in the photo above), or any other squash with a sweet flavour. You can make this recipe vegan/vegetarian by using vegetable stock instead of chicken stock.

Cheyenne pepper

Warming roasted squash and pepper soup recipe

2-3 large winter squash sweet dumplings or 1 large butternut squash (ideally a sweet variety)
2 small yellow peppers
2 small red peppers
1/4 chilli pepper - or however much chilli gets your preferred level of heat - I used a cheyenne F1 chilli pepper*, so used 1/2 of it because these are less hot than other chilli peppers
2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 pints chicken or vegetable stock (optionally made with boiling water and a stock cube)
5 tsp smoked paprika
Salt to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 180° (fan).
2. Peel the squash if it's the sort of squash that can be peeled raw. Remove the seeds and chop it into large chunks or wedges and put on a baking tray.
3. Remove the seeds and stem from the bell peppers and cut each pepper into 4, then place on the baking tray.
4. Remove the seeds and stalk from the chilli pepper, cut down to the amount required, and place it on the baking tray.

5. Pour over the olive oil and toss the peppers and squash in it to make sure they are all coated.
6. Put the tray of squash and peppers in the oven and bake for 45 minutes.
7. Allow to cool until cool enough to touch. Then, if you weren't able to remove the squash's skin when it was raw, remove it now by scraping the flesh out with a spoon. Put the roasted squash (without skin) and peppers (including the chilli pepper) in a liquidiser. Add the stock, smoked paprika and salt to taste (you may have to do this in 2 batches, in which case put half of each of the ingredients in each). Liquidise until smooth.
8. If necessary (e.g. you used cold stock), heat the soup through in a microwave or in a pan before eating.

* I grew my cheyenne peppers in the greenhouse from small plants I bought at a local garden centre. They have a relatively mild level of heat (30,000-50,000 Scoville heat units) and I highly recommend them. They were attractive, compact plants (about 30 cm x 30 cm), grew a huge amount of fruit and were fairly simple to care for.