Recipe | Pumpkin Soup

As promised yesterday, here's the recipe of the Pumpkin Soup, which I got from the June 2008 issue of Yummy Magazine.


Pumpkin Soup
{serves 5}

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 2 cups fresh pumpkin, roasted and diced
• 1 apple, peeled and diced
• 3 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup cream
• salt and pepper to taste

How to Cook:

• In a stockpot over medium heat, melt butter and saute onion, carrot, apple and  roasted pumpkin for about 8 to 10 minutes, until all are tender. Puree the mixture in food processor or blender.
• Return the puree to the stockpot, add chicken stock and simmer for 15 minutes.
• Add cream and simmer for 5 more minutes, lowering the heat if necessary to keep the soup from getting too thick. Season with salt and pepper.

My mom's cholesterol level is a little higher than normal, so I didn't put all the cream, I just used about 1/2 cup, enough to make the soup a little thick and creamy. The recipe didn't indicate exact measurements - it was difficult to determine how big the carrots and apples should be - but for this recipe, I used 2 carrots as long as my hand (from my wrist to the tip of my middle finger) and instead of 1 apple, I used 2 small ones, because it was the only size available in the nearby market.

This was the first time I cooked soup of this kind (the others didn't require pureeing), and since we don't have food processor, I used the old blender to puree the ingredients. Obviously, I need to push some ingredients down and I had a scare when the spoon I was using hit the blades of the blender. I sure hoped we have the stick blender, but for the mean time, the blender would do, I just had to be careful next time.

It wasn't as thick and creamy as the regular pumpkin soup, but it was comforting and really good. It paired well with the other dishes we cooked for that dinner, and now that I have cooked this, the idea of doing a "Soup for Dinner" diet is quite feasible.