Pumpkin-sun soup

Getting cold? Want to feel real warm in your stomach? Ask me and my Japanese colleague Pumpkin-sun how! :)

This is one of my favorite soups - even its color is life-asserting! Not to mention it is as spicy as one wants and easy to cook (better, if you have a blender). So, you will need

~500 g of pumpkin (a piece a bit larger then a palm of your hand)
Ginger (I use dried powder, fresh ground will do as good, or even better)
1 onion
200 ml of cream
all your favorite spices

Optional: carrots, potatoes, herbs, bullion, garlic, nuts, coconut milk.

If you want to make your soup more nutritious add 1-2 potatoes and a carrot. In fact, it doesn't affect taste too much. Use of coconut milk will make the taste more intriguing and allow for more spices - an option for the ones who freeze badly :) Herbs are good, boil them in your bullion but then filter it in order not to spoil the perfect orangitivity of your soup.

So, let the feast begin. First, peel the pumpkin. If it's too difficult bake the pumpkin for few minutes in the oven, it will soften. Cut the onion. In the pot, warm up olive oil with some cinnamon, then fry onions, garlic and carrots (if you want them in your soup) till they soften a bit, add potatoes (again, in case you want them. If not - just skip this step) and ~1 l of boiling water (or bullion), boil everything for 5 minutes and add pumpkin. Boil again, till the pumpkin gets soft (another 3-5 minutes). Now, fish out all the vegetables (keep the bullion!) and blend them with love and passion. Bring the orange awesomeness back to the bullion, add cream (or coconut milk), ginger (I put ~2 tablespoons of powder), cayenne pepper, a bit of salt (and whatever you consider appropriate, spice-wise), let it boil all together for couple of minutes - and enjoy!!!

Today there's no picture because when I made this soup the previous time it was over too fast. But theoretically you can serve it with sliced almonds or slightly roasted cedar nuts and parsley.

An idea for a late quasi-dinner

Some people have an idea of not eating much or tough after 6 pm. But, following the Russian piece of wisdom, the hunger is not an aunt or a random woman - there's an ambiguity in the original saying (meaning, you actually cannot get rid of it), so weak in body but strong in spirit, we have to indulge our stomachs after the sun sets. Especially justified in autumn and winter when the organism spends so much effort on keeping the blood above solidification point. To remind one how does the summer tastes here is an idea: some black bread, cheese (goat cheese in my case), a fig and a bit of red wine.