Latin American Peanut and Potato Soup

Ingredients

• 4 tbsp peanut oil
• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• about 6 red potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1 can chopped tomatoes (about 7 oz)
• 1.25 cups of unsalted peanuts
• 6.25 cups of beef stock (or veg)
  
• salt and pepper
• fresh cilantro, chopped
• honey
• cayenne pepper

Heat the oil in a large heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and cook for about 5 minutes, until onion starts to soften.
Add the garlic, potatoes, pepper, and tomatoes. Stir well to coat everything evenly, then cover and cook for 5 minutes until softened.
Meanwhile, toast the peanuts by cooking them in a large dry frying pan over medium heat. Make sure they don't burn. Move them around often. You don't want burned peanuts.
Set a 1/4 cup of the toasted peanuts aside to use as a garnish. Put the rest in a food processor and grind them up. Add them to the vegetables.
When vegetables are done cooking, remove them from heat and transfer to a blender and blend until smooth.
Return mixture to the pot and stir in the beef stock. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
Serve, garnished with the chopped cilantro and toasted peanuts.

Thoughts: This wasn't too difficult to make, and it was pretty delicious. I had the thought of adding some cayenne pepper, and Dan had the thought of adding honey. They make lovely additions to this dish, so by all means, add them both (probably just before serving). Also, I had the idea that buying fresh, in-the-shell peanuts would be a good idea because they would taste more fresh. This is probably not true, and they were a pain in the ass to shuck. So just go ahead and buy the canned ones (as long as they aren't salted! Christ!). We're having a little bit of difficulty coming to a consensus about the rating on this one. It was an unobjectionable soup, but it wasn't particularly striking. I would probably make it again.

Disaster Index: 1-2/10

Update!
only use 3c water,
4 cups worth of beef bouillon
about 2-3 tbsp honey (until you can JUST taste the sweetness)
juice of 1/3 to 1/2 a lemon
pinch of salt
pepper
cayenne to taste

Proceed as usual. About half way through the vegetables being cooked, throw HALF of them in a blender with the 3c of water. Blend smooth and re-add to the other vegetables with the 4 cups of beef bouillon. Bring to a boil and cook until the chunks of potato are tender - 10 minutes or so. Take off the heat and add remaining ingredients, tasting after each addition.

Disaster Index: 1/10