Pumpkin Soup
The coldest months of the year call for comfort food favorites - the type of food than can be eaten from bowls around a raging wood fire. In these parts comfort cooking usually means slow cooked casseroles, hearty one-pot dishes and warming winter soups.
The orto is producing winter greens such as chicory, tuscan kale, bitter greens and plentiful herbs. Root vegetables, fruit and nuts from the autumn harvest sit on the cantina shelves, stored in metal or wooden boxes to allow for good airflow, ready to be used in a medley of cool climate recipes.
Soups are a definite favorite here and a large pot of some kind of vegetable soup simmers on the wood-fired stove every single day. It's my go-to for a healthy, hearty, easy lunch.
Each pot usually lasts 2 meals and so there is a real need for constant inspiring recipes to combat boredom! I love to use root vegetables and handfuls of herbs together for the freshest flavour in a season when we need all the vitamins we can get.
Ribbolitta - tuscan kale soup, is a favorite as is the ubiquitous local recipe of Farro soup.
Then every other vegetable is up-for-grabs in my soup pot.
Everyone seems to love pumpkin soup, including myself. However I ve stopped growing pumpkins here due to the disappointing fact I cannot seem to get pumpkins which are truly flavoursome - unlike the ones I grew up with grown in the southern hemispere.
In Australia my pumpkins of preference are Ironbark, with a very hard flesh and skin, Queensland Blue, similar and Japanese pumpkin also known as Kabocha. These varieties all make a delicious soup packed with a power punch of flavour and are equally delicious roasted or steamed.
Still I persevere with pumpkin soup in Umbria and have adapted my recipe with a few extra ingredients to attain as much flavour and colour as possible. Here's how I do it..
First I roast the pumpkin along with a few red capsicum, onions and some heads of garlic, a few wild thyme sprigs- the capsicum will help boost colour as well as flavour.
While the vegetables are roasting I prep a little soffritto in olive oil - carrot/celery/onion and fry it off in the pot I will cook in. Here I add 1 or 2 small red chillis with seed removed.
When veggies are ready, let them cool before chopping them and adding to the soffritto mix - season.
I always use a home-made veg stock for soup which is usually stored in the freezer.
Now begin to add the stock - 1 1/12 litres, building up as it starts to become absorbed by the veg.
When most of the stock has been added, let it simmer away for about 25 minutes.
Allow to cool, then place mix in a blender. Blend on high speed until smooth.
Now place the blended liquid back into the pot and simmer very low for a further 20 minutes or so.
I find this soup is very flavoursome thanks to those extra little ingredients and also because the main vegetable base has been roasted. Win - win.
And it is just so, so yummy with a bowl of roasted crispy croutons on the side...
These gorgeous pumpkins were grown by a friend in her garden in Tuscany.
So many varieties but I am yet to find my personal favorite varieties available here in Italy...I'm still on the hunt though!
Michelle x
Images - Michelle Jacobson
Our House In Umbria
