Pumpkin Soup

I don't normally post recipes on the blog but earlier today I made Pumpkin, Sage and Parmesan soup for my lunch and was asked numerous times for the recipe, so it seems to make sense to pop it on the blog.

Copyright Susan Crawford 2012

What I really loved about this soup, other than how delicious it was, is that both the pumpkin and the sage are out of my garden. However a shop bought pumpkin will do the job just as well I am sure and its a great little recipe for using up the remains of a pumpkin thats been used as lantern at halloween!

So first of all the ingredients are:

The flesh of a medium pumpkin, chopped into cubes (mine was frozen pumpkin from last year's crop)
25g of unsalted butter
1 chopped white onion
1 chopped clove of garlic
Nutmeg
A good handful of freshly chopped sage leaves
800ml of vegetable stock (I use Marigold)
3 tablespoons double cream
Parmesan
Salt
Black Pepper

Begin by melting the butter in medium sized pan with a good heavy bottom. Add the onion and gently cook for about 5/10 mins, then add the garlic for a minute or so. Next add all of the chopped pumpkin, along with the sage and a healthy grating of nutmeg. (I like a lot of nutmeg but obviously that's down to personal taste, however I think pumpkin needs plenty of other flavours added to it so don't be nervous of the nutmeg or the sage). Finally add the vegetable stock. Now keeping the heat pretty low, cook until the pumpkin is 'pulpy' stirring occasionally - mine took about 20 minutes with the lid partly over the pan, but use your own judgement on this. Turn off the heat and either mash or preferably roughly blend the soup. I use a cheap little hand blender for this and it does the job in next to no time. Don't over blend as you don't want a completely smooth soup. Pour in the cream. When serving add a plentiful quantity of grated parmesan all over the surface of the soup so that it melts into the soup. Add salt and pepper as preferred (you can always add the seasoning during cooking, but I like to do it at the end so that everyone gets it seasoned as they like it).

Serve immediately. On this occasion I served it with garlic bread and it worked perfectly but any bread of your choosing will work just fine I would think.

And that is that. Two of us had a healthy bowlful each for lunch and I would say there's at least the same again for tomorrow so I would say serves 4 to 6 depending on how much you like it!

Hope some of you try it, that you enjoy it and that it makes you good!

for now
Ruby x