So here is one of the soups I made recently (well a couple of weeks back…)

Pumpkin Soup

Use the pumpkin from Halloween.  I always buy a large one which I carve in the basic fashion (sorry, nothing fancy).

  If you chop it up the next day it is fine to cook with.  If you leave it much longer it goes slimy!

So obviously I had already scraped the slimy stuff and seeds out before I carved it.  I usually discard the lid which doesn’t improve with the smoke from the candles.

I chopped the thing in half and then into smaller chunks.  I take the skin off.  I used about 2/3 for the soup and 1/3 for a pie (of which more later).

I then fried the pumpkin and some frozen onion in a tablespoon of oil together with ginger, salt and pepper.   Keep stirring until it’s all coated and the pumpkin starts to just g soft.  Add 1 litre of vegetable stock.  Stir well and simmer on a low heat until the pumpkin is very soft (this can take a while).

Then blitz in the blender and hey, presto!  Add more ginger and seasoning if you like it spicy.

As I say I used the rest of the pumpkin to make a pie.  I took the recipe from a cookbook so I won’t set it out here but top tips:

a. Steam the pumpkin rather than boiling (it went soft but not soggy and slimy)

b. Use low fat creme fraiche instead of cream

c.  Don’t make really “short” shortcrust pastry because it is too crumbly!!

It was delicious, however!

Belated Happy Hallowe’en!