This recipe comfortably serves 6 to 8 people. I just cooked a whole huge pot of it (thanks to a home-grown pumpkin I received as gift). It is tasty, with salty, sweet and hot notes blending nicely, and it is above all extremely orange!
Ingredients:
2 onions
30g butter
3 big carrots
1.5kg orange pumpkin
500g sweet potatoes (2 large ones)
1.5l chicken stock (substitute veggie broth if you want)
3 oranges
200g regular potatoes (3 small ones)
8cm piece of ginger
1dl of 15% fat cream
salt, white pepper according to taste
Preparation:
Chop the onions into small cubes. Skin the pumpkin and cut it into small cubes as well.
Actually not my tip, but one I read on the internet. If the pumpkin is hard and you have trouble skinning and cutting, put it (cut side down) into the oven for an hour at 170°C until it gets soft. In my case, this was not necessary.
Peel sweet potatoes and 2 carrots, and cut into small bits.
The real potatoes, and the remaining carrot should be separately cut into small cubes. Peel amd grate the ginger, and press the oranges.
In a big pot, melt the butter and briefly fry onions, without allowing them to brown. Next, add the pumpkin and two carrots, and let fry for maybe 5 minutes while occasionally stirring, until the pumpkin reduces and softens a little and you can begin to smell the nice aroma.
Now, add the orange juice and the chicken stock. Add the sweet potatoes and the ginger. Cover pot and let cook gently for 1 hour to 90 minutes, until the vegetables are soft.
Purée the soup. The best way to do this is not to use a power blender, but instead a “passe-vite”, a type of churn to puree soups by hand. You will need to do two rounds, one with the medium-hole sieve, one with the fine sieve. The big benefit is that the outcome is a lot creamier, as the power blender leaves fibres uncut. Still, this can be messy, be warned!
Now, taste the soup, and add salt and white pepper, and possibly some more ginger. Add the small cubes of carrot and potato, and let cook for an additional half-hour until they’re soft. They help to take away a bit of the sweetness, and they add some texture to the soup. Just before serving, add the cream.
Enjoy!
