pumpkin soup with thai red curry and smoked pumpkin seeds

My business partner and I went on a scounting mission to the Cape Town fresh produce market in Epping recently, and as we were wandering around we stumbled across a crate of the most beautiful looking pumpkins.

I just had to get one.

As this is a mass buying market, its not always the easiest trying to buy a single item.  Luckily another buyer offered to include it in his order and I landed up paying R10 for this beauty.

My initial thinking was I would create a few recipes with it, although I would have been happy to just have it lying around looking pretty in my kitchen.

I do so love good looking food.

In the end all I made was this soup, and then roasted a whole lot of slices with olive oil, and sprinkled over some smoked chilli. I gave the other half away.

what you will need to make:

• 2 celery stalks – sliced
• 1 carrot sliced
• 1 onion roughly chopped
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• +-850gms of fresh pumpkin cubed
• 1 – 1/2 Tbsp of thai red curry paste depending how hot you want it
• 2 tsp of fresh ginger (optional)
• 1 litre of chicken or veg stock
• cream or coconut cream – optional
• smoked and or roasted pumpkin seeds to sprinkle over the top

How to make

• heat the olive oil in a large pot
• sweat the celery, onion and carrot until just soft
• stir through the curry paste and then add the cubes of pumpkin
• cover all the vegetables with stock and ginger and allow to simmer for about 40 minutes until soft
• cool and process through a food processor or hand blender
• stir through fresh cream or coconut cream (and you could also top with fresh coriander)
• sprinkle over smoked, roasted pumpkin seeds

The smokey flavour of the roasted pumpkin seeds adds such a rich and intense flavour dimension to the soup as well as a lovely bit of crunchy texture.