Sunday, May 27, 2012

Pumpkin Soup

Today it was raining at Farm #3 so we spent the morning cooking!!  I had a very good time - spending time in the kitchen doesn't really feel like work to me because it is something I like to do.  The day I got here they had butchered a rooster so we made chicken stock using the carcass an meat and we also made pumpkin soup from a pumpkin grown in the garden.  I am not usually a fan of pureed soups but this one turned out fantastic so I thought I would share it.

Ingredients (I am going to put what we used but you can adjust for the size of pumpkin or piece of pumpkin you are using):

a 4 kg (or 9lb pumpkin)
4 or 5 medium to large onions
2 large potatoes
6 cloves of garlic (peeled and crushed)
1 and 1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin
4 bay leaves
salt and paper to taste
a dash of hot sauce (optional, if you want spicy pumpkin soup)
enough water or broth to cover the pumpkin once it is added
butter or olive oil to saute the onions

Process:

Cut the pumpkin and clean out the seeds.  Cook in the oven (or microwave) until soft then peel (you can peel then just throw it in the pot uncooked but it is a lot harder to peel that way).
Chop and saute the onions in butter or olive oil until translucent.
Then add the pumpkin, bayleaves, and water (or broth).
Chop and add the potatoes.  Keep adding water if needed. 
Simmer until everything is cooked (about 20 minutes mainly waiting on the potatoes but also the pumpkin if you didn't cook it first).
Then add spices (cumin, salt, pepper,) and crushed garlic cloves.  Simmer for another 10-15 minutes.
Then puree the soup in a blender or food processer.

This recipe makes a SHIT TON of soup.  So you can put it in containers and freeze it if you want.  Or if you only have a bit of a pumpkin it is easy to scale down the recipe.  I would guess you could also use any type of squash instead of the pumpkin.  What I liked about this recipe is the soup tasted so creamy - it was almost like there was some sort of cheese or cream added, but there wasn't.  So I know it isn't squash or pumpkin season in the States right now but tuck this recipe in your brain for when it is.  I should've taken pictures while cooking but I didn't realize the recipe would be good enough for a blog post - hope you enjoy even w/out the photos.
This is the type of pumpkin that we used.

1 comment:

Laura said...

Those pumpkins are huge! Also it is funny to see you cooking pumpkin soup while my pumpkin plant is tiny and I am just starting to get lots of Spring greens!