These days, Sunday evenings are about tossing up a soup with whatever we can find at home. This weekend I found a Pumpkin and I decided to go with a roasted pumpkin soup. This is a fairly easy soup to make and is not at all effort intensive. And I have found that you can use a this recipe to make any roasted veggie soup as well.

First, de-seed and skin the pumpkin and and dice into 1 inch squares.

In a bowl, add some olive oil and mix with thyme & rosemary (and any other spice that catches your fancy). Finely chop the onions and toss them and pumpkin pieces into the bowl and mix well. Transfer to a plate and roast this in an oven at 180C for 40-50 mins.

Mid-way into the roasting take the plate out and turn the pieces over so that they can cook evenly. Add the garlic pieces now and continue to roast. Once the roasting is done allow it to cool down.

Pick some fresh curry leaves from your balcony garden (or wherever else you have planted them), slightly sauté them in oil and set aside. Transfer the roasted pumpkin mixture into a blender, toss in the sautéed curry leaves, add some water and blend well.

Transfer contents to an open vessel and bring to simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste. This is the time to add a dash of cream or butter if you feel like.

Usually, these blended soups don’t really have a mouth-feel.  We stumbled upon an interesting way to add that missing punch. Fry some almonds (or cashew nuts) in a bit of ghee till they just start turning golden-brown. Before you serve the soup, heap up some of this roasted nuts with pepper to taste in the soup bowl and then ladle the soup onto this.

Best served with toasted and lightly buttered brown bread.

Roasted pumpkin & Curry leaves Soup ( serves 3 )

Ingredients –
Red pumpkin – 250 gms
Onion – 1 medium sized
Garlic – 2 – 3 cloves
Rosemary – 1 tsp
Thyme – 1 tsp
Olive oil – 2-3 tbsp
Freshly plucked curry leaves – a handful
Crushed pepper – to taste
Butter/fresh cream (optional)