Pumpkin Soup on Pumpkin Day

Technically, I chose a lovely squash. So, Pumpkin-Like-Squash Soup on Pumpkin Day it is.

Once upon a time, this chef (a loose definition of the word, please) saw a lovely recipe on a very popular social media site. This recipe featured cooking soup in an actual pumpkin - in the oven - instead of in a pan on the stove top. I posted the recipe to my page.

Never to find it again.

So I am chef/experimenter/food explorer attempting to make up my own recipe. Let's see what kind of meal that gives us on this last day of October, Pumpkin Day!

Pumpkin Soup for Pumpkin Day

Ingredients:

- perfectly sized pumpkin for your soup bowl (It has to fit in your oven. Do not use a carving pumpkin. I am hoping a squash of similar size and shape will work. The meat of this squash was wonderfully deep orange in color and very rich smelling.)

- one leek, washed and thinly sliced

- 3 cloves of garlic, diced

- 7 or 8 fresh sage leaves

- chicken broth, anywhere from 3 to 6 cups, depending on the size of your pumpkin bowl

- 1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese for the soup, additional for sprinkling on top of cooked soup

- fresh ground black pepper

- dash of cayenne pepper

- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of nutmeg, depending on your love of this spice

OVEN: 400 degrees F.

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Cover jelly roll pan with parchment paper.

2. Prepare pumpkin (or squash). Remove lid and scoop out seeds and stringy parts of the pumpkin. Keep the lid. It goes without saying, but I will anyway. Do not pierce the base of the pumpkin or make holes in the sides! The soup will surely leak out. Put the pumpkin shell on the parchment paper-lined pan.

3. Add leeks, garlic, and sage. Fill the remainder of the pumpkin with chicken broth. Fill to the top of the inside of the pumpkin, leaving room for lid to close and enough space to add cheese and spices.

4. Add 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, peppers, and nutmeg. Replace lid.

5. Bake in oven for two hours. Pumpkin should be steaming hot, with soft, cooked flesh. Oh, you are going to love the fragrance of this cooking soup pot!

6. Remove lid. Scoop bits of cooked pumpkin flesh and soup into a bowl. Top with additional parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!


PS After cooking and devouring this fragrant soup, I decided that crumbled bacon bits and some half and half would go very well with pumpkin-in-a-shell soup.

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn't keep her.
He put her in a pumpkin shell.
And there he kept her - very well.

I adore pumpkins. But I don't imagine I would enjoy being kept in a pumpkin shell for very long.