soup | organised castle

I cannot believe that despite writing this blog for over 12 years, growing pumpkins and there being several references to making pumpkin soup that I have never actually written an entire post about making it. Nor have I added a recipe to the index.

Well, I am about to remedy that oversight.

We are still living in temporary accommodation but that has not stopped me preparing meals. The weather is cold and a bowl of piping hot soup is a welcome addition to the menu. I made cauliflower soup a few days ago and now it is time for some pumpkin soup. I bought a whole pumpkin from a nearby roadside stall for $7.

Whilst this may sound expensive it works out to less than 50c for a generous serve and is one of the best flavoured pumpkins I have had in a long time.

There is only one saucepan in our current accommodation so I only used half of the pumpkin.

The following recipe and method are my preference, however, you can adjust and modify according to your own tastes and circumstances.

The quantities are what I used but they are quite variable according to taste.

PUMPKIN SOUP

Ingredients

Half a large pumpkin
2 teaspoons oil
2 teaspoons balsamic syrup
2 medium onions, finely diced
Salt
Pepper
3 teaspoons vegetable stock powder
1/2 teaspoon smoky paprika
750ml water

Peel pumpkin, remove seeds and cut into large wedges. Place pumpkin in a large bowl. Combine a couple of teaspoons of oil and balsamic syrup and pour over the pumpkin. Toss until it is all coated with the mixture. There shouldn’t really be any excess – just enough to coat the pumpkin.

Place the pumpkin wedges in a single layer in the air-fryer and cook for 30 minutes at 190C. You may need to do several batches depending on the size of the air-fryer.

Finely dice 2 medium onions. Add a small amount of oil to a large saucepan or stockpot and saute the onions until soft. Add the pre-cooked pumpkin, water and seasoning. Simmer for 10 minutes then puree and adjust seasoning/liquid as required.

I use a stick blender to puree the soup, however, you could use a blender or food processor.

**WARNING** Whatever method you use to blend the soup you need to be very careful to avoids burns or scalding.

NOTE: The recipe for balsamic syrup is here.

Today we went to the mushroom farm which is about 15 minutes drive from our place. They sell mushroom compost for 60c per bag. These are the bags of spent compost once they can no longer harvest commercial quantities of mushrooms.

We have a small garden bed which has had celery growing in it for over 12 months and I finally harvested the last of it and wanted to top the bed up with some compost before planting the garlic.

Since we have to make a trip in the ute to get the compost we generally buy a few bags at a time to make the trip worthwhile. Today we bought 10 bags and have used 2 so far.

The other bags of compost are stacked and waiting to be added to the vegie gardens at a later date.

At the right time of the year and in the right conditions (cool and moist) you can sometimes get another flush of mushrooms as an added bonus.

While we were collecting the bags of compost I noticed mushrooms in some of the bags so I picked them and brought them home.

Here they are on the kitchen bench

They do not look quite as pretty as the perfect ones that we see in the shops but the large ones are so full of flavour and perfect for making mushroom soup. It is definitely soup weather and it is great to have a variety of home-made soup to choose from in the freezer.

736g of usable mushrooms after peeling and trimming them. That is not bad for an incidental acquisition while collecting the compost.

Here is the recipe

MUSHROOM SOUP

4 tablespoons butter

2 cups finely chopped onion

500g mushrooms, sliced

2 cups vegetable stock

1 tablespoon tamari (or soy sauce)

1 teaspoon paprika

3 tablespoon flour

1 cup milk

1 cup water

Black pepper

Sea salt

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Chopped parsley

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter, add onions and saute. Add mushrooms and cook for 2 minutes. Add vegetable stock, tamari and paprika. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

In another saucepan melt the remaining butter, add flour and cook for 2 minutes. Gradually add the milk blending until smooth. Add the water and stir until thickened. Add sauce to the mushroom mixture. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Sprinkle with chopped parsley to serve.

I find that this recipe freezes quite satisfactorily.

I made one and a half times the recipe with my mushrooms and have 7 large meal-sized serves from that.

If you have the opportunity to try this recipe I would love to hear what you think.