Pumpkin appears on the stalls in September and stays until the frosts. It is cheap, keeps well and works for soup, porridge and bakes — yet soup is the dish that disappoints most often.

Instead of a velvety cream the bowl holds a yellowish broth in which the water is obvious. The taste is flatter than you would expect from that many vegetables.

The reason is neither the variety of pumpkin nor the blender. Everything is decided at the stage where the vegetables are cooked.

What you need

  • pumpkin flesh — 800 g
  • onion — 1 large
  • carrot — 1
  • garlic — 2 cloves
  • oil — 2 tbsp
  • cream, 20% — 100 ml
  • vegetable or chicken stock — 300–400 ml
  • salt, freshly ground pepper
  • a pinch of nutmeg
  • pumpkin seeds to serve

How to make it

1. Cut the vegetables. Peel the pumpkin and cut it into three-centimetre cubes, slice the carrot into rounds and quarter the onion.

2. Spread on a tray. Lay the vegetables in a single layer, drizzle with oil, salt them and toss by hand.

3. Roast, do not boil. Thirty to thirty-five minutes at 200 °C, until the edges begin to caramelise. In water the pumpkin gives its flavour to the broth; in the oven it keeps it.

4. Add the garlic. Five minutes before the end put the cloves in, still in their skins, then squeeze the flesh out.

5. Blend. Move the hot vegetables to the jug, pour in half the stock and blend until smooth.

6. Bring it to the right thickness. Add the stock a few spoonfuls at a time, blending after each. That way one extra cup will not turn the soup thin.

7. Warm with cream. Pour into a pan, add the cream and heat without letting it boil. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Serve straight away with pumpkin seeds and a drop of oil. The soup keeps for three days in the fridge; reheat it gently and never boil it, or the cream will split.

Nota bene

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