Spiced Pumpkin Soup
If you’re like me and struggle to see soup as a serious meal, this one is for you. It’s rich, creamy, and spiced, for all the good mouth party times. And thick enough that it’s plenty filling when paired with a fresh baguette. Tamara's food journal: http://on.fb.me/1qsIOlY
Ingredients
- 1 large butternut squash (or 2 small)
- 1 carrot, roughly diced
- 1 celery stick, roughly sliced
- 1 brown onion, or 3 shallots, diced
- 2-3 cloves garlic, minced (personal preference can dictate)
- 1.5 tsp fresh minced ginger
- 1 can organic coconut cream
- 3-5 cups vegetable stock (add last to achieve preferred consistency)
- 1 whole star anise
- 1.5 tsp cinnamon
- 1.5 tsp ground coriander seed
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
- salt & pepper to taste
- coconut oil for frying (olive and grape seed are fine too)
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius.
2. Dice the butternut into small chunks, place on an oven tray, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and all the spices except the star anise. Place in the oven to roast for 40 minutes, or until soft and fully cooked.
3. 15 minutes before your pumpkin is ready to come out of the oven, sauté the diced onion (or shallot), carrot and celery in a medium saucepan with some coconut oil. When starting to soften, add the minced garlic, ginger, and star anise. Get only just a touch of colour on them, you don’t want this mix to caramelise, so keep it over a low-medium heat.
4. When ready, turn down to low and add the can of coconut cream and one cup of the vegetable stock to the pan and let simmer and infuse.
5. Make sure the rest of your vegetable stock is warm-hot.
6. When pumpkin is ready, take out of the oven. Now depending on what appliances you are working with, you can either add the pumpkin to the saucepan and blitz with a hand blender, adding a cup of stock at a time until it has reached your desired consistency, or you can add the pan mix, the pumpkin, and again only a cup of stock at a time to a good food processor and blitz until your happy with the consistency. Either way you do it, make sure you season as you go with salt and pepper.
7. This is where you can play with your spices a bit – I generally like a punch in the face with spices so I add a little more of each to the saucepan/processor and blitz again.
8. Now you’re ready to serve! I like to keep this rustic, with just a sprig of flat leaf parsley and some sliced baguette
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