This year I wanted to try a different pumpkin soup and since Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery Course has taken over from Delia’s Complete Cookery Course as my basic ‘how to cook’ book I thought I’d see if she had a pumpkin soup recipe.
Spiced Pumpkin Soup
Serves 6-8
- 900g Pumpkin or winter squash, peeled, de-seeded and cut into 1cm cubes
- 175g onion, peeled and chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 25g butter
- 1 sprig thyme
- 450g very ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped or 1 400g tin tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon tomato puree
- 1.2 litres home-made chicken stock
- salt and freshly ground pepper
- pinch nutmeg
- 35g butter
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
- 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
- 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
- 1 teaspoon white mustard seeds
- 5cm piece of cinnamon stick
- Put the pumpkin into a pan with the onion, garlic, butter and thyme. Cover a sweat over a low heat for 10mins stirring once or twice.
- Add the chopped tomatoes and tomato puree and cook until dissolved into a thick sauce.
- Stir in the stock, salt, pepper and nutmeg and simmer until the pumpkin is soft. Discard the thyme stalk then blend the soup. Add extra water or stock to taste.
- Melt the butter and cook the spices. Remove the cinnamon stick and pour the spiced butter into a swirl in the soup as you ladle it out.
The spiced butter is very nice in the soup but a bit of a faff if you are dishing up this soup as a quick lunch. However this soup does need spice, we found adding smoked paprika to the soup worked well.
100 Cook Books 