On toppings

A warming pumpkin soup with all the toppings

Pumpkin soup

Takes: an hour (half of which is slow-cooking on the stove without supervision)
Makes: enough for 6 people, with bread and lots of toppings

Ingredients

for the soup:
2-3 medium pumpkins (1.8-2 kg)
4 sticks celery
2-3 shallots
2 large or 5-6 baby carrots
2 granny-smith apples (optional)
1 cube veggie stock
1.6 L boiling water
1/4 t freshly ground nutmeg (or 1/2 t dried)
a few saffron threads
2 cms ginger root, peeled and grated

ideas for toppings:

• smokey chickpeas: 1 can chickpeas, olive oil, 1 t cumin seeds, 1 t smoked paprika, sprinkle of crushed chillies

• crumbled feta: 1 block feta (vegan if you like)

• dollops of fresh yoghurt: 300 g greek yoghurt (coconut if you want to go vegan)

• tahini sauce made with lemon juice and water

• fresh herbs: parsley or coriander are classics, but thyme would also work

• Ottolenghi’s cascabel oil (smoky, complex and sweet, I really recommend giving this a try) or olive oil you’ve infused with dried chillies

• roasted almond slivers or pumpkin seeds

• bread: sourdough toast; a side of garlic bread: half-baked baguette, 40 g soft butter, 3 cloves finely minced garlic, and chopped chives; or just toasted flatbreads

Method

1. Dice onions, celery and carrots. Place into the bottom of a large soup pan with a little olive oil and cook gently until they are beginning to soften but not brown (around 10 minutes), while you prepare the other veggies.

2. Peel pumpkins with a veggie peeler if thin-skinned, or with a knife if hard-skinned. Scoop out seeds with a spoon and discard. Chop remaining flesh into roughly square pieces. Add to the pot along with 1.6 L of boiling water and one cube of vegetable stock. If using apples, peel and core, then chop them roughly and add to the pot.

3. Leave on a low heat to slow-cook for at least 30 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, prepare the toppings.

5. If making the chickpeas, drain a can and then heat them up in a frying pan with a little olive oil, 1 t cumin seeds, 1 t smoked paprika, salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of dried chilies.

6. For the garlic bread, take one of those supermarket half-baked baguettes (or make your own if you’d like to be fancy), slice it 3/4 of the way through, leaving 2 cm unsliced at the bottom to hold the loaf together. Open up the slices and spread with garlic butter (a quick mix of 40 g soft butter, 3 cloves finely minced garlic, and chopped chives or other herbs). Roast in the oven in foil for 15 minutes until toasty and melty and delicious.

7. Once the veggies in the soup are soft, blend it in batches in a blender or with an immersion stick blender. Season to taste with pepper and salt, a few grates of fresh nutmeg, ginger and a few pieces of saffron. Give it a final whiz with the stick blender and/or add more hot water if needed, to get to the desired consistency, not too runny, not too mashy.

8. Serve the pumpkin soup in your most rustic pot, or just pop it on the table in the soup pot you cooked it in. Adorn it with a smattering of earthy saffron threads, or if you’ve made the cascabel oil, rip some of the oil-soaked chillies into pieces and toss those over the soup (see first photo). Or serve as is, with all the toppings on the side. Enjoy.

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The story behind the recipe…

I was turning eight or maybe nine, and all I really wanted for my birthday was to go to Pizza Hutt for $5.99 all-you-can-eat. Sure, there’d be a vegetarian pizza, the cheese kept gloopy under heat-lamps, a few cheap black olives that tasted only of salt, an oregano-heavy tomato sauce. But I wasn’t there for the pizza. I’d eat an obligatory few slices, then sidle my way to the back of the restaurant, to the sparkling ice cream sundae bar, laden with options. There, I would carefully weigh up the merits of sprinkles, shades of chocolate chips, chopped peanuts, those tiny marshmallows, sauces. The joy was in choosing the toppings, finding the right combination, knowing I could go on back and try all over again if it wasn’t perfect.

Nearly thirty years later, porridge, which we eat most mornings, plays out my love of toppings. We mix them up, depending on the season, on our whims. A deluge of toppings. Berries, fresh or frozen, apple, kiwifruit, rhubarb compôte. Seeds, Chia or linseed or pumpkin, chopped almonds, dried fruit. Tahini and date syrup. Peanut butter and banana and maple syrup. Porridge need not be boring.

A dish served with toppings on the side cedes sovereignty from chef to diner. It says to your guest, I trust you to find your own combination, to choose your own adventure. And who doesn’t love to choose their own toppings, be it over ice cream, porridge, or pumpkin soup, over homemade pizza or tacos. Toppings speak to the child in all of us.

Pumpkin soup has been hovering around our kitchen for more than a month now. I’ve cooked pot after pot of it, working my way through a giant cardboard box of pumpkins we got from a friend’s farm. We’ll eat some, freeze some, grow tired of it, then crave it again as the weather turns icy-cold and the trees miraculously hold onto their gold leaves. We carved some of the pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, sliced some thinly and roasted them before layering into lasagne (inspired by Ottolenghi’s), but the rest gradually made their way into soup.

Pumpkin soup reminds me of shared church lunches. As soon as the service was over, someone would drive to the supermarket to buy bread rolls, still warm, so fresh they were nearly sweet. Bread that is prayed over, bread that is broken by many hands, dipped into the communal pot. Pumpkin soup is quintessential potluck food.

In October, I took a giant pot of it to a party. As he spooned some onto his plate, a quiet Spanish guy I’d just met asked me what it was called. Pumpkin soup, I said, and he burst out laughing. The lights were low and I suppose he was expecting I’d introduce him to some New Zealand specialty, or maybe it was just so far from his vision of soup, a refreshing gazpacho or an ice-cold ajo blanco.

My pumpkin soup principles:

• Blend it to the consistency you like. Some people like it smooth and glossy, as if poured from a tin, but personally, I like to find a few hidden chunks of vegetables in my soup so I know its the real homemade deal.

• Always add a bit of water when heating it from cold; it will thicken up in the fridge.

• Taste and season at the end.

• You can complicate a pumpkin soup recipe all you like, but why not keep it simple? The simpler the soup, the wilder you can go with your toppings.

Have you also been cooking pumpkin soup as the weather has turned cold? I’d love to hear your topping ideas!

Till next week.

Amelia.

P.S. Here’s the ratio I use for perfect porridge: 1 cup whole oats (pre-soaked), 2 cups water, 1 cup milk (of choice).