The cayenne pepper
gives this soup some character. Add some
cooked pasta to your bowl to make a meal of it.
This recipe is adapted from Very
Fond of Food: A Year in Recipes by Sophie Dahl.
For hints on how to
cut up a pumpkin, see below.
Serves 4
4 Tbsp (50 g) butter or oil
2 lb (1 kg) pumpkin, cubed
1 onion,
peeled and chopped
1 clove
garlic, peeled and chopped
2 Tbsp
sherry (optional)
3 ½ c (875 mL) chicken or vegetable stock
¼ to ½ tsp
cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes
Bay leaves
Salt and
pepper
2 Tbsp heavy
cream or sour cream
Parmesan
cheese
Toasted
pumpkin seeds and chopped parsley for garnish (optional)
Cooked
pasta, if desired
In a large soup pot,
heat the butter or oil and add the pumpkin, onion and garlic. Cook until the onion is soft. Add the sherry (if using), then add the
stock, cayenne pepper and bay leaves.
Cook until the squash is tender, between 10 to 30 minutes.
Remove the bay leaves
and puree the soup. Season with lots of
salt and pepper and add the cream. (If
you use sour cream, stir some soup into the sour cream first, then pour this
mixture into the soup).
Serve with a topping
of grated Parmesan, and the other garnishes if you like.
How to cut up a pumpkin
- Sharpen your kitchen knives.
- Wash and dry the pumpkin.
- Pretend you are carving a jack-o-lantern and cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin, around the stem. Remove this lid.
- With a large, sharp knife, cut the pumpkin in half from the top (where the hole is) to the bottom. For a large pumpkin, do one side at a time. Cut the halves into a few large pieces.
- Scrape the seeds and stringy bits off the pumpkin pieces with a spoon.
- Pretend you are cutting a melon and slice each pumpkin piece into wedges approximately 2 inches (or 5 cm) wide.
- Take one pumpkin wedge. Holding one end in your hand, cautiously use a sharp knife (aimed away from your hand) to slice the skin off the wedge. This will take a few knife strokes. Don’t to be delicate – you have to slice the skin off thickly, and you will lose a certain amount of pumpkin flesh as you go. Repeat with the remaining pumpkin wedges.
- When you have peeled all the wedges, slice them crosswise into chunks. Now proceed with your recipe!