Pumpkin soup; perfect for Halloween season

Since it is the autumn and Halloween just took place, what could be a more suitable food than pumpkin soup. Granted, it's not perhaps the most traditional Finnish food, but let's go with the flow and the season anyway. The unfortunate thing is that Halloween has already passed, so the chances are you don't have extra pumpkins lying around.


Nevertheless, you need pumpkin for the pumpkin soup, so a trip to the grocery store it is. You need 1 kilo of pumpkin and can thus leave the bigger ones for Cinderella. She needs to get to the ball somehow anyway, so let's not sabotage her big night, shall we. Other ingredients include 2 deciliters of cooking cream, 2 stalks of celery, one middle-sized onion, one apple and spices. Salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and paprika will do nicely.



Start by cutting the pumpkin in four pieces; first cut it in halves and then the halves into halves. Just be careful as the pumpkin can put up a bit of a fight. Scrape off the seeds and put them aside. Don't throw them into the bin though as you can still use them as well. Once you've scraped off the seeds, cut the pumpkin pieces into smaller pieces. Put them on a pan or an oven tray and roast them in 250 Celcius for 20-30 minutes. Let them cool off afterwards.



While you have the pumpkin pieces in the oven, you can clean the seeds. The easiest thing is to just put them on a kitchen towel, fold it and rub them "clean". Put the seeds on a oven tray, season with canola oil, salt and chili powder. Once the over is free again, roast the seed in 200 Celcius for about 10 minutes. The roasted seeds are perfect snack as such or you can have them with the soup.

Then back to the soup. You need to chop the stalks of celery, onion and apple. Sauté them with some butter or margarine for a moment. Add approximately 5 deciliters of water and let it set for a brief moment.

And back to the pumpkins. Now that they have cooled off, peel them and put them in a blender. Add also the chopped celery, onion and pour all the water, that you added to the pan after sauteing. Pour in also 2 deciliters of cooking cream. Once the soup is nice and velvety, season it with salt, nutmeg, paprika and a bit of cinnamon. And remember, if you like thinner soup, feel free to add water or cream.

 

Recipe:

  1 kg pumpkin

5 dl water
2 dl cooking cream

2 stalks of celery

1 middle-sized onion

1 apple
3 tbsp butter/margarine for sauteing

Salt

Nutmeg

Paprika
Cinnamon