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Spicy Pumpkin Soup

It’s winter here at the moment, which means fairly cool (cold) days and a healthy dose of strong westerly winds. Perfect weather for fresh bread and hearty pumpkin soup. Which is just as well, as I’ve had a butternut pumpkin sitting on the kitchen bench for the last 3 or 4 months (these things seem to keep forever).

So I set about making soup out of said pumpkin, which turned out quite tasty, even if it was a little heavy on the garlic (and thus this recipe now features half as much garlic as what we ate this evening). I also forgot to take a picture of the served soup, so instead we have this one (below) of the soup on a ladle in the saucepan.

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h2. Ingredients.

* 1 large butternut pumpkin
* 2 cloves of garlic
* 1 x 2cm piece of fresh tumeric root (see picture below), peeled
* 1 teaspoon of salt
* 1 teaspoon of coriander seeds, dry roasted and ground
* about 500ml of cultured buttermilk
* some extra milk
* 1 to 1.5 Tablespoons of butter

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Tumeric Root

h2. Method.

Firstly, cut your pumpkin into pieces. I sliced mine into about 1 inch thick slices, then quartered those slices. Remove the pulp and seeds, and peel the skin off with a sharp knife.

Pre-heat your oven to 230C.

Steam the pumpkin until just becoming tender. (I used a microwave steamer, using the vegetable setting with a High variant). Now brush the pumpkin pieces with olive oil and lay out on a baking tray. Bake until fully tender, turning occasionally to ensure nicely browned sides and even cooking. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.

While the pumpkin is cooking, chop your garlic extremely finely (or if you must, press it). Using the side of a large knife, press the chopped garlic together with the salt (or alternatively use a mortar and pestle). Set aside in a small dish.
Finely chop the tumeric and press together with the ground coriander seeds and then mix that with the garlic.

Take the slightly cooled pumpkin pieces and place them in a food processor with all the remaining ingredients (except the extra milk). Blend until smooth. Add sufficient extra milk to bring the blend to a more soup like consistency (you can always add more milk in the pan).

Transfer the lot to a saucepan and warm through, adding extra milk if required to maintain a soup texture.

Serve with fresh crusty bread.

posted to Australian,Recipes @ 6:26 pm

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