Spicy Thai Style Pumpkin Soup

It was rainy and cold today and my house mate messaged me asking what I wanted for dinner. I had a pumpkin in the fridge that had sadly gone bad but had been planning to make pumpkin soup for days and was craving it so she brought home the ingredients as per my instructions. She was even surprised by how tasty the end result was!

It's simple and comforting on a rainy day. We toasted some bruschetta slices she had spare in the freezer to accompany. The recipe is just basic and we used what I had on hand however you can add lemongrass or kaffir lime leaves to make it a little more exciting.

please excuse the crinkled tablecloth...

Spicy Thai Style Pumpkin Soup

serves 4

1kg (about 1/2 of a large butternut) pumpkin chopped in to small cubes
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
1 large thumb sized knob ginger
200ml coconut cream/milk
2 cups vegetable stock/water
fresh or ground chili to taste
2 tsp fish sauce
1 tbsp lime juice
fresh coriander chopped last minute
salt and pepper

Chop the onion, garlic and ginger and sweat onions in a pot with a neutral oil (canola, vegetable, rice bran etc.) for a few minutes on medium heat. Add garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant.

Add cubed pumpkin, stock and coconut milk/cream along with chili, fish sauce and lime juice. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10-15mins or until the pumpkin has cooked through.

Transfer to a blender (you may have to blend in batches depending on your blender size) and whiz until smooth.

Alternatively, stick mix it all up in the pot! If you have one.

Stir through the chopped coriander and enjoy!

Tips: Remove the middle insert in the blender lid and secure over the lid with a tea towel (and your hand!) while blending. The tea towel trick means that you won't get that pressure build up from the sealed lid + hot soup which is the culprit of the old press-blend-scalding-soup-goes-everywhere. It might mean you get a little soup on your tea towel from covering the hole but its a price I'm willing to pay to save my kitchen from soup projectile.

If you like it thicker add more pumpkin/less stock or vice versa for thinner.

And if you're in a mad rush and need your soup fix replace onions with spring onions/shallots and grate the pumpkin and it'll cook in no time!