Pumpkin soup (2)

Today I (N.) made pumpkin soup. And as Kurgerbing mentioned before, I am the queen of pumpkin soup (wow, that sounds horrible). I used 2 little pumpkins (I made a jack-o'-lantern out of one of them, because it will be the 11th of november this week. In Holland we celebrate Sint Martin's day, on which children will come by the houses to ask for candy. On this day lots of the houses are illuminated and ours will be by the jack-o'-lantern).

Besides the 2 pumpkins I used 2 pieces of garlic, 5 potatoes, a vegetable bouillon cube and 1 litre of water. And - a friend of mine told me that this is the piece of resistance (translated by wikipedia :-)) - above that all I added two shallots. This friend (B.) told me she once read that masterchefs use them all the time. I think they smell bad, but taste quite good.

Of course the soup tasted great and looked wonderfully yellow.

Pumpkin

With a few days gone by and taking food pictures each of these days, it was easy to get behind on the blogging schedule. So, here's to catching up.

First up: Pumpkin!

Two weekends ago, during our stay at Schiermonnikoog with S&O, the conversation turned somehow to pumpkin soup and we invited them to come over and sample our pumpkin soup. Last wednesday, they came over. Since I was at home the whole day, I felt it was my duty to make the soup.

There are few things I hate more than making pumpkin soup. Because, you see, we always think that our pumpkin has to be carved out also to make a jack-o-lantern. That means that we can't just cut the pumpkin up and peel it, but instead have to hollow it out. That is one seriously annoying job.

Because there would be four eaters, I got an extra large pumpkin at the market (pear set next to it for size comparison).
I cut off the top, making sure to cut at an angle, to make sure the top wouldn't fall in when it would be put back. I took out the seeds and the attached strings. That's one half of the irritation: I can never get out all those strings. They're too slippery to get a good hold of and they don't easily get scooped out with a spoon.

It took a painstaking two hours to cut, carve and scoop out most of the flesh. That would be the other half of the irritation. Those two halves are the second reason I always let N cook the pumpkin soup. The first reason would be, I tend to think her soups tend to taste better than mine.

I roasted the seeds in the oven. If their skins wouldn't be so hard to remove, they would make for a nice snack. Now, it just takes an awful lot of time to get just one seed peeled.

In the end, the soup was rather okay. I served it with (soy) cream, some buns and smoked sausage. I forgot to take pictures of it. Instead I'll finish this post with a picture of the jack-o-lantern, which doesn't even look like the 'devilish cat' it was supposed to become, but whatever. What a pain. I'm glad it's all over now.