Halloween is gone, tons of pumpkin are still with us. This is the perennial experience… This year I gave in and cooked the soup. I read a bit, experimented a bit, and the result is already gone.. i did not have a chance to take a picture.. Perhaps next year?
These ingredients produced almost 2.5 l of soup:
- Roughly 750 g of pumpkin (in its already peeled and clean state)
- 5 sizeable carrots
- 1 large cooking apple
- 2 onions
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 250ml water
- 750ml broth (this time it was home made chicken stock)
- 1 tbsp mild curry powder (to stimulate flavour)
- 1 tsp of hot curry powder (out of concern for some of my guests, stopped at 1 tsp)
- 150ml sour cream
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1/2 lemon juiced
- a handful of raw pumpkin seeds
- a handful of roasted pumpkin seeds.
- If using frozen supplies of the broth, take it our of the freezer.
- Dice the pumpkin, carrots and onion into rough cubes.
- Large pot with the oil on medium heat, let it warm up.
- Drop the chopped vegetables and fry gently for five minutes, stirring occasionally.
- In the meantime chop the apple (no need to peel it.. just t\remove the core and seeds).
- When you think the vegetables are warm and covered in oil, add the raw pumpkin seeds, curry powder, apple and water. Fry for a few minutes. I really wanted to see the pumpkin soften a bit.
- Add the stock and let it all simmer until things are cooked. It took me a good 20-30 minutes, perhaps because the stock,when added, was not completely thawed.
- Mashed the soup as thoroughly as possible with the hand blender . It did nor quite cream the liquid, but mashed it sufficiently to pretend it was creamed, For a moment I considered straining it and applying some further mashing mechanism, but decided against it. It had an interesting character as it was.
- Finally, added the cream and give it a good stir.
- Tasted, add a pinch of salt and pepper and lemon juice.
- At this point i had to let it cool of and reheated later, but all worked well.
When serving the hot the soup i provided roasted pumpkin seeds as optional garnish..