Fall Into a Savory Soup

Savory Soup

After traveling in New York for several days to attend a Verizon Summit (#vzsummit), and enjoying meals at fabulous restaurants there, I returned, craving home made comfort food.

Just before the trip, I roasted a pretty sizable pumpkin (uncarved), yielding a two large sheet pans of delicious pieces of roasted pumpkin.

So before heading into Alki Surf Shop on Saturday, I searched for a pumpkin soup recipe, and found one that looked good, but I didn’t have some of the ingredients.

Never one to let a missing ingredient stop me, I forged on!

The original recipe, Thai Pumpkin Soup with Coconut Milk, called for lemongrass, fresh coriander, vegetable stock and coconut milk. But I didn’t have any of those things. So here’s what I did:

Terri’s Pantry Pumpkin Soup


Ingredients:



2 TB Olive Oil
1.5 medium onions, diced
5 cloves of garlic left whole
3.5 lbs. of roasted pumpkin, diced*
1 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp curry powder
2 TB fresh minced ginger** (which BTW, was frozen—more below)
zest of half a lemon

Stock - Ingredients:



4 cups water plus 4 chicken bouillon cubes
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp onion power
1/4 garlic powder

I’d already roasted the pumpkin and had it on hand, and as anyone who likes roasted vegetables knows, it's the most flavorful way to eat veggies. All you have to do is coat your veggies with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, than place on cookie sheets for about an hour at 450 degrees. OMG.

soup

Soup Directions:


Heat the oil in a large stock pot, dump in the garlic and onions, and sauté until translucent Add chopped pumpkin, minced ginger, 1 tsp of coriander and 2 tsp of curry, and cook for about 5 minutes. It will look sort of mushy.

Dissolve 4 chicken bouillon cubes in a quart of warm water, then add 1/4 tsp onion powder; 1/4 tsp garlic powder; and 1/4 tsp ground coriander to the stock. (Since I didn’t have vegetable stock (in the original recipe) and had just used the last 4 cans of chicken stock to make pumpkin soup earlier this week, this was a workaround.)

Dump the stock into the pumpkin mixture and bring to a boil. Simmer for 30 minutes, then add the zest of 1/2 lemon

The cool part! My adorable sister gave me a immersion stick blender a few years ago. Since then, I bought another, and another and have gifted four of them to family and friends. I LOVE THEM!

Does it Blend?


You bet! In the stockpot, if you have a stick blender, just BLEND IT. In a few minutes, you have an amazing, rich soup. And since I skipped adding the coconut milk listed in the original recipe, I have to think it has a whole lot fewer calories. SIMPLY YUMMY! Give it a try, or give me a shout with any questions and I'll do my best to answer.

BONUS STUFF


*Roasted Pumpkin

pumpkin seeds

Wash, core (save the seeds!) and cut up the pumpkin into chucks. Mine were around 5-6” in size. Coat the pieces with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper Single layer on cookie sheet(s) place into a 450 degree oven for about an hour. The fleshy part of the pumpkin with be fork tender. Peel the skin and chop up. I even eat the pumpkin with a bit of butter as a (sort of bland) side dish.

**Ginger trick!

I always store ginger root in the freezer. It keeps beautifully. For this recipe, I took a chunk that came to about 2 TB, and microwaved it for 30 seconds, turned it and gave it another 30. The skin just slid off! I then julienned, then minced.



Comments

  1. Anonymous12:52 PM

    I can testify that the soup was wonderful - flavorful and hearty - perfect fare for cold, dark, rainy Seattle nights. Kudos to my amazing sister who excels at whatever she does! -- Melis

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dear Meliss,

      You're a fine one to say so when you're the most amazing cook! Thank you for reading and commenting and especially for attesting to its flavor! ((HUGS)) Tink

      Delete
  2. Yes, I was lucky to have some of this pumpkin soup. I didn't realize she concocted it without a recipe. She has great cooking intuition! I must thank Terri for our venture into roasted veggies several years ago, starting with brussel sprouts. They are the way to go! Thanks Terri!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Paula, thanks for reading this and commenting.

      You had some of the first batch—which, imho wasn't as good, and certainly not as good as the squash soup you shared with us! OMG!

      The pumpkin was so big, I ended up freezing a pretty good amount of it. I would love to have the recipe for the killer soup you made!

      (((HUGS)) T

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  3. Melissa is right, you're so good at, well, everything. That looks like exactly what you'd want after a mad dash to New York. I would definitely like to make this....the spices sound heavenly and I love that you made use of the seeds, too. Would you believe that I've never cooked with fresh pumpkin before? I roasted a butternut squash last week and it was delish so I'm moving on to pumpkin.Thanks for sharing this great recipe, Terri!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dear Jennifer,

      I'm pretty sure everyone here can cook like crazy!

      I thought this might be a good recipe for you if you subbed veggie for chicken stock.

      Fresh pumpkin can be a chore if it's a large one!

      The last time I "cooked" a pumpkin by steaming it, then put the pulp through a vegetable ricer. I ended up baking a couple of pumpkin pies. They were OK but totally not worth the amount of work it required.

      Butternut squash is super yummy and a more manageable size!

      Thanks for reading, Jennifer! You're a pal!

      ((HUGS)) T

      Delete

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terri

i'm a graphic designer who loves words. - terri nakamura