Pumpkin fun!

Last year when my parents visited us in Maastricht in October we ate at a very nice restaurant NXT Door and we had the best pumpkin soup! Since then I wanted to make my own soup, but didn’t have the time for it and then the pumpkin season was over. Now I have lots of time, I decided to make pumpkin soup and use the leftover pumpkin for a Halloween crafting! For this recipe I used an Italian pumpkin of 7 kilos and so we had a lot of leftover pumpkin. When you dig in the pumpkin for the pulp you will get large bits of pumpkin and more pulpy bits. Use the large bits for the soup and leave the pulpy bits out for pumpkin-filled-ravioli! I will feature this recipe next week.

Ingredients

1 pumpkin, 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 large carrot (250 g.), 2 onions, 2 toes of garlic, 2 leaves of laurel, 1 teaspoon of cumin, 2,5 tablets of vegetable stock, tabasco red pepper sauce, 1 cup of cream (125 ml.), pepper and salt and brown bread.

Preparation

Dig in the pumpkin for the pumpkin pulp and put the large pieces in one bowl and the pulpy pieces in another bowl. If you don’t have such a large pumpkin, you can use all of the pieces for the soup, also the pulpy pieces. Make sure that you leave the ropy fibers and pumpkin seeds out! If you want you can clean the seeds and keep them in your kitchen storage for other recipes  :-).

Cut the pumpkin pieces, onions and carrots into small pieces, sprinkle some olive oil in a large pan and bake them for 5 minutes. Then, add the cut garlic, laurel leaves and cumin. Add one liter of water and the 2,5 vegetable stock tablets. Heat the soup until it’s cooking and leave it on the fire for 30 minutes. You can stir it occasionally. After 30 minutes, take out the laurel leaves and mix the soup with a mixer. Add a few drops of tabasco, pepper and salt and a bit of cream as much as you prefer. You can also add some (fresh) parsley as a topping. Roast the bread and put it on the side. Buon appetito!