Luxor4u

Hi,
With Halloween round the corner I'm feeling a bit domesticated and wondered if anyone has any good pumpkin soup recipes or butternut squash soup.
Many thanks
Jo x
P.S must be relatively simple!

A lot of the recipes I have contain bacon so they're out for us but I keep trying differnt ones I come across and have yet to find one that the kids (and Mr MM) really like. I used to have one years ago whic was lovely and I think it had curry powder in which was the only time I used the stuff even my Mum liked it which was something
So I shall watch this thread with great interest

50ml vegetable oil
1 small onion
2 leeks
1 carrot
2 stix of celery
2 red chillies
1 red pepper
2 cloves of garlic
2cm fresh ginger (grated)
1kg diced pumpkin
2 tsp curry powder
2 litres veg stock
60g red split lentils
salt and pepper
Fresh coriander

First soak the lentils in water for about 2 hours.

Heat the oil in a large pan and add the chopped onion, leeks, carrot, celery, chillies, red pepper, garlic and ginger. Fry until the vegetables are soft and well browned. Add the diced pumpkin and sweat in the mixture for about ten minutes turning regularly. Add the curry powder and cook out for 1 minute. Add the stock and lentils and simmer up for at least 1 hour or until the lentils are soft. Season with the salt and pepper and whizz up in a jug blender. Reheat to serve and finish with some chopped fresh coriander.

I usually leave out the lentils and sometimes replace them with pearl barley.

Thanks, that sounds interesting I'm not sure about the chilli and curry though.
I used to make a curried cauliflower soup once that was ok.

I think that is why they make scary heads from them on its own pumkin flesh is pretty bland, most recipes usually spice it up a little.

I made Pumpkin soup once and even with generous seasoning it's really bland

Funnily enough I made some tonight.
Quarter the pumpkin remove seeds and brush with olive oil , bake for 25 mins., leave to cool then scoop off the flesh.
One large onion fried in 25 g of butter to soften.....add 1.5pints of veg stock and add the pumpkin to it
Peel and chop a bramley apple then add to the pumpkin mix which is still on the heat untill all softened. Season to taste, then blitz.

Its actually quite tasty...roasting it apparently brings out the taste, as does the apple.

Good luck.

Whatever happened to good old turnip lanterns we always used to have?



Really swedes I know but loved them, they had a wonderful smell and much better looking than that American import the pumkin - along with the ubiquitous "trick and treat"

well tonights the night! I'll let you know how it goes!

I know Jewel, my two insist on having a pumpkin, of course, because that's what the kids these days are used to using but when I was young (many moons ago ) we had never seen a real pumpkin only on TV programmes from America and never thougt of using anything else but a turnip (swede now ) the smell still reminds me of bonfire night and halloween. That's another thing we always made more of bonfire night and halloween and mischevious night now it's all hallloween. I supose it's all elf and safety, but we always had a bonfire in one of our gardens with my Dad in charge who was a bit of a pyromaniac he loved making garden fires and always started off the bonnfire with a touch of petrol

I was brought up on a council estate, we mastered the art of using a large potato for lanterns!:lol: you were posh if you had a swede!

When I were a lad we used to walk ten miles to't pit in a clog and a boot

Mimimay wrote:When I were a lad we used to walk ten miles to't pit in a clog and a boot

Huh! sheer luxury! we had to sleep in a hole in the road

Mimimay wrote:When I were a lad we used to walk ten miles to't pit in a clog and a boot

Cripey! How come everyone I had sussed as being laydees are now suddenly fessing up to being lads??

there was a recipe on river cottage tonight ,which was butternut squash soup with peanut butter stirred into it , perhaps you can get it on the i player.

oooo I've sky plus'd it! and I didn't make the soup tonight in the end as all that shopping tired me out so I can watch good old Hugh and River Cottage first! thanks for the tip off!

Well I finally made it! I took advice from all your recipes and put them all together with some other friends had given me to create the Joey special.
This was for a big big pot and I hang my head in shame I should have listened to Brian and others and added the spicey factor as although it was very nice it could have used curry powder too. I also should have increased my ginger according to my pot as it was lost a bit.

1 large pumpkin,
2 onions
1 large leek
5 carrots
5 celery sticks
1 garlic bulb (not clove)
grated fresh ginger
1 chopped apple
1 chopped red pepper
All spice
worcester sauce
black pepper
single cream
Chicken stock
grated cheese
croutons

I cut all my pumpkin up roughly and also the carrots popped them in the oven to roast with the cloves of a garlic bulb and sprinkled with olive oil.

On the hob I sweated the leeks,celery, onions, peppers and apple and added the grated ginger and a little water.

When the pumpkin mix was browned and soft I added it to the onion pan and blitzed it with the hand blender added the chicken stock bit by bit until a good consistency was reached then simmered a little more adding all spice and worcester sauce ( as realised it needed the spice!) and black pepper.

Took it off the heat stired in a little single cream got back to heat again the served with grated cheese and croutons.

It was lovely but think I should have upped my apple and roasted garlic and a few extras to account for the larger pan, and think curry powder would work!

Thanks everyone for your input x

Next week I shall be attempting a light moist fruit cake

p.s. you should probably avoid blending when still hot but we couldn't wait for it to cool!

Mmmmm, sounds yummy....for the record, the one I made, personally if it had been just for me, I'd have just added a couple of dashes of tabasco to it, but being as there was a 19 month old eating it too, I thought i had better not.

mmmmmm tabasco...or Louisiana Hot Sauce, which is what I use.