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!

Malaysian Style Pork and Eggplant Curry

This is my favourite curry at the moment to make (and eat), it is soooo delicious and so insanely easy!

I know a lot of curry pastes call for labor intensive crushing in a pestle and mortar but every time I've made this I've just used my trusty old mini food processor and whiz it all together.

Once you make the paste, marinate it with the meat then when you're ready to go cook it all up in a pot with the coconut milk and cinnamon sticks. You can simplify it even further by using chicken for quicker cooking - which I have tried with great success or make it vegetarian/vegan by substituting with tempeh or tofu - also tried and v. delicious (and soy for fish sauce, unless you have the veg. type available).

I found the recipe online somewhere and ended up making some adaptations, then lost the original recipe and had to re-write it from memory (even after some intense googling I couldn't find it again) so I think I can safely assume (hope) that it's been personalised enough for me to take the credits.

Recipe

Serves 6

1kg pork cubed (I like forequarter because it's cheap and has no bones)
1 cup chicken stock
1 400ml can coconut milk or cream
1 large/2 small eggplant cubed
1 1/2 cinnamon sticks

For the paste:

1 onion or 6 scallions/spring onions
4 cloves of garlic
1 tsp sized knob of ginger
3 tsp of turmeric
6 birds eye chilies (more or less to taste, or chili flakes if you can't get fresh)
4 tbsp of Chinese five spice
1 1/2 tbsp shrimp paste/fish sauce
2 tbsp tamarind paste
salt and pepper to taste

Chop the bulkier paste ingredients like ginger, onions and garlic in to more manageable pieces (to make sure you don't end up with a big chunk of ginger)

Whiz all paste ingredients in a food processor until smooth. If you only have a large food processor I would recommend either doubling the recipe and freezing half the paste or busting out the pestle and mortar.

Mix paste together with pork and set in the refrigerator for a few hours/overnight.

Saute in large pot until fragrant and paste is cooked. Add cinnamon sticks coconut milk/cream and stock, if sauce is too thick add some water/extra stock. Bring to boil then simmer for 1-2 hours depending on cut of pork or until pork is tender.

Add cubed eggplant 20mins before end of cooking time and simmer until soft.

Remove cinnamon sticks and serve over steamed rice!


Tip: If you're wanting to cut down on cooking time, substitute pork for chicken thighs and add eggplant along with coconut milk etc. cook until eggplant is soft and serve!