[This post originally appeared on dailykos.com in the What’s For Dinner series, v11.31.]
A small disclaimer on squash soups:
My Mom and brother both told me they did not like a squash/pumpkin soup they were given. I recently tried a Trader Joe’s boxed squash soup that was given to my brother, possibly by the same person, and I hated it — cloying, I think is the word. This is nothing at all like that soup.
Ingredients:
For this soup, you need one smallish sugar-pie pumpkin — about 3 pounds. You need two sprigs of thyme, four cloves of garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper. You need a quart or liter of stock — the recipe calls for chicken, but I’m sure a veggie stock could be substituted. [The taste of the soup depends hugely on the stock used, so if you typically make your own stock, each batch of soup may be different. I’m fond of plain ol’ Swanson’s canned chicken broth, and have actually found it works well for me in this soup (don’t tell Alice). I buy the big 6-cup cans and freeze 2 cups for other use.] The croutons are essential, so you also need bread that you can cut up into 1/2” to 3/4” pieces (neatness doesn’t count), as well as a couple Tbsp butter and pepper (again). This is an excellent way to use up bread that has gotten a bit old and dry (but not stale). In fact, I cooked this soup on this particular day in order to use up the end of such a loaf.
Making the soup:
Preheat your oven to 350F. Split your pumpkin in half. I split it top-to-bottom, because the two halves will fit onto my small-oven tray that way. Remove the seeds and scrape away the pith as well as you can (into a small bowl, rather than the compost, if you also want to make a little snack later — see below). I think scraping out the pumpkin is the hardest part of this soup. There must be a pumpkin-scraping-out tool out there somewhere…
Rub “the cut sides” with olive oil. I have always taken this to mean both the flat edges that you actually cut, and also the scraped inside of the pumpkin. I use probably ½ Tbsp oil per half pumpkin, though I’ve never measured. Salt and pepper the insides of the pumpkin “generously.”
Place the pumpkin halves, cut sides down, on your baking sheet, tucking one sprig of thyme and two cloves of garlic — still in their “paper” peels — under each half of the pumpkin. Bake 45 minutes or until the pumpkin flesh is very soft.
When the pumpkin is cool enough to handle, scoop out the pulp or peel the skin off the pumpkin. Place the pulp into a saucepan where you can mash it quite thoroughly with a masher. Also pop the four garlic cloves out of their skins and mash them along with the pumpkin. Compost the thyme. [The texture is not silky in this soup, so using a Cuisinart or blender would change it a lot. I’ve never tried this.]
Add the stock to the mashed pulp, mix, and reheat.
You’re done.
Except…
Making the croutons:
These can be prepared while the pumpkin roasts, and cooked in the same oven. Cut your bread — either dry or fresh bread — into 1/2” to 3/4” chunks. “Toss them in melted butter,” says the recipe. I melt the butter in a small pan and then toss the bread in that. For maybe 1 cup of bread (recipe: 4 slices) I used 2 Tbsp of butter. I didn’t say this was health food.
Place the buttered bread chunks on a baking pan in “moderate” oven (lo and behold, there’s a 350F oven just waiting for them!) and cook till rather dark brown. With dry bread this can take about 15 minutes, but set a timer for 10 and check on them. Fresh bread will take longer. [A toaster oven can be super fast so beware.] Grind pepper over the croutons as soon as they’re removed from the oven.
Try not to eat all the croutons before the soup is ready. Unused croutons from the first serving can be stored, after completely cooled, in an airtight container on the counter.
Serving:
The one lesson we learned pretty early on is to wait till everyone’s at the table and the soup is cool enough to eat before topping it with croutons, so that they don’t get soggy while waiting. I just put a portion of croutons into a small bowl for each diner and they can shake them on when they’re ready. Also, taste the soup during the final boarding process to see if it needs more salt, since “salt and pepper generously” is rather vague. (The recipe also offers the option of adding unsalted butter during the final heating for a richer soup, but I’ve never tried this.) Enjoy!
Optional Snack:
We now move to The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash. This is an oldie-but-goodie we call “The Joy of Vegetables” b/c it serves sort of the same purpose as the original Joy — basic recipes for how to cook pretty much everything, so long as the “everything” comes from your vegetable garden.
I used to think of roasting the pumpkin seeds as a sort of hippie obligation, but then, every time I eat them I realize how yummy they are. Kind of addictive, in fact.
The first part is fun for the residual kindergartener in each of us: with your fingers, skoodge the pumpkin seeds out from the pith and place them in a bowl. DO NOT wash the seeds. I think this is part of why this recipe is so tasty.
When the pumpkin halves come out of the oven, turn the temperature down to 250F. For each cup of seeds (a 3-lb pumpkin yields about a cup), mix in ½ tsp salt and 1 Tbsp
unopinionated oil (we use peanut b/c we have it; corn would do well, too). Not olive, is the apparent message. But then, what the heck, it would just be a different taste. The recipe allows up to double this much salt but my experience is that the minimum amount (given here) was perfect.
Mix the seeds well with the oil and salt, and spread on a baking sheet, in as close to one layer as you can conveniently create. Bake 1.25 hours or till the seeds are dry. These, too, can be kept in an airtight container after they cool, if there are any left to keep.
Recipes from A Dinner Journal 