Spicy Pumpkin Soup

With Hallowe’en approaching I thought I would drag this out of the archives.

This is a beautiful winter warmer, spicy, creamy and smooth. It’s also perfect not to waste the scrapings from making your pumpkin man. Obviously the amount of flesh you get depends on how thinly you scrape the inside of the lantern, but as in all my recipes the amounts are open to alteration. If your pumpkin is about a foot in diameter you should be OK.

Ingredients:

1 Pumpkin, peeled and chopped small (if not scraped out of a jack ‘o’ lantern)

Half a bag (200g) Chestnuts (you can use ready cooked in pouches if you like)

4 cloves garlic

2 Medium Onions

2 Red Chillies

6 Allspice Berries (if you can’t find allspice, find some, none of this using random mixtures, or mixed seasoning nonsense)

1 tsp Whole Black Peppercorns

1 tblsp Whole Cumin

1 dessert spoon Caraway Seeds

1 Pint GOOD stock. If you have none, don’t use stock cubes they are too salty. Use Marigold Bullion.

1 tsp Grated Nutmeg

Oil for frying

Large Knob of Butter

150 ml Double Cream

50 ml Brandy.

Method:

1 ) Chop the onions, garlic and chillies, de-seed the chillies if you are a wuss. Heat the oil in a large pan and fry add the whole spices (i.e. not the nutmeg). Add the Onions, Garlic and Chillies and fry gently so that they brown but do not burn.

2 ) Meanwhile roast the chestnuts in a gas mark 6 oven for about 15 minutes. Remember to pierce them, else they explode like some kind of crazy pipe bomb.

3 ) Peel the chestnuts and add these, the pumpkin and the butter to the pan and fry for about 10 minutes, gently.

4 ) Add the stock, and boil for about 15 minutes until the pumpkin is cooked.

5 ) Remove from the heat, cool, add the cream, brandy and nutmeg and blend until smooth. Return to the heat to warm through.