Thursday, October 23, 2008

Soup Du Jour

I love soups. They are healthy, easy to make, and perfect for cold weather. Also, soup is cheap to make, and you can use almost anything you have as inspiration.

I made a delicious pumpkin soup last night for dinner--it was cold and rainy and I wanted something comforting--and thought I'd share the recipe. We had baked a pumpkin, so I had some leftover pulp, and I wanted to make it the base for a soup*. It's very rough since I made it up based on what I had in the house, so definitely tweak flavors and ingredients where you so desire!

Curried pumpkin soup

Saute an onion (chopped), one celery stalk (chopped), and some garlic in a little olive oil until the onion and celery are beginning to brown and smell really good. Add pumpkin pulp (maybe about 2 cups or so?) and a heaping tbsp of curry powder. After a minute or two, add one can of coconut milk + one can of water. (I also added maybe 3 cups of vegetable stock or so). Use an immersion blender and puree mixture until smooth. This is the pumpkin soup base. Add salt, pepper, nutritional yeast, and other seasonings to taste.

After pureeing the base, I added 3 small potatoes, finely diced (you can leave the skins on!), 1/3 cup dried lentils, and 2 carrots, finely diced. Cook everything over low heat until vegetables and lentils are done.

Serve with a dollop of plain yogurt, or skip the yogurt to keep it vegan (personally, I like the tang of the yogurt with the deep spicy flavor of the curried soup). It was great for a cold and rainy day! Also, it's even tastier the next day--I really enjoyed it for lunch.


Do you all have some good soup recipes?

*I'm guessing not every household has leftover roast pumpkin lying around, so possibly--though I highly discourage it--it might be okay to substitute one can of pumpkin. The flavors won't be quite as good, though. Just go buy a small pumpkin, cut into quarters, scoop out the seeds and stringy bits, coat lightly in oil, and roast in the oven until tender (at 375 degrees or so). Then you can puree it (the leftovers) and bake a pie or make some pumpkin muffins or something.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

pumpkin soup huh, it sounds interesting

s.elva said...

I made butternut squash soup Thursday night, but it was the recipe from _Twelve Months of Monastery Soups_. I'll have to post it when I get home.

Yum, yum!

bockstark.knits said...

For my pumpkin soup (I just learned how to make it!), I sautee 1 leek in olive oil, then throw in pumpkin and carrots, then top it off with water and some chicken boullion (not sure what to substitute if you are a vegetarian - is there a veggie soup base?). tie up a bunch of parsley (sits at the top) let it cook about 30 minutes - 1 hour on low heat (it should boil though). When the veggies are soft, puree it in the pot (I have one of those hand blender thingys). Add some creme if you want it creamy. It is so yummy, but I think any pumpkin soup is yummy! I'm going to try that yogurt idea...mmmmm...