Cold weather always makes me crave soup. I have a couple of soups on rotation during the cold months and one of those is an easy, peasy pumpkin soup.
It basically involves softening some diced onion and garlic in a bit of oil. Then I add peeled and diced pumpkin to the pot, add just enough water to cover the pumpkin, plus a couple of teaspoons of vegetable stock powder. This gets simmered until the pumpkin is soft. Then I mush everything up with a stick blender, season with salt and pepper and add a teaspoon of curry powder (just enough to give it a slight flavour - not too much). We normally eat the soup with a bit of sour cream on top.
The hardest thing about making this soup is peeling the skin off the pumpkin. It's such a tedious job but made easier with a sharp knife.
To go with the soup, I usually make French onion muffins. The recipe that I use comes from a little muffin book that I bought from a discount shop a few years ago (back when it wasn't as easy to find recipes online). The book cost me $1! Onion muffins are the only muffins I've ever made from the book, but it's still been $1 well spent!
French Onion Muffins
From Marvellous Muffins by Robyn Martin
Makes 10
2 medium onions
2 tablespoons oil
50g butter
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup grated gruyere cheese
Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Peel onions and cut into thin rings. Heat oil in a frying pan and fry onions over medium heat until golden. Add butter to pan and melt. Remove from heat and set aside.
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Make a well in the centre of dry ingredients. Lightly beat eggs and milk. Add onion and egg mixtures to dry ingredients. Add the grated cheese, reserving some for sprinkling on top of the muffins. Mix quickly until just combined.
Three quarters fill greased muffin pans with mixture. Sprinkle over the rest of the cheese and bake for 15 minutes or until cooked. Eat warm.
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