…the spooky, yet heart-warming Halloween feeling!
Pumpkin Soup
(this is so easy, yet what you definitely need is a good knife or an ax – that’s right – not to scare some kids off, but to tackle the pumpkin)
1x pumpkin (preferably eatable – except you want to get rid of your guests)
1x onion (red or yellow – Europeans, you might need 2, as the sizes here do differ)
– vegetable broth (ideally without glutamate, yeast or sugar) depending on the amount of pumpkin
– cream (NOT sweetened or other funny business)
Optional: 3-4 carrots, ginger, chili-pepper
Get a big enough pan, delegate the pumpkin peeling, cutting, de-seeding to someone strong & willing 🙂 you can peel & cut the onion in the meantime (trust me you will prefer the few tears to the fight with the pumpkin).
Fry the thinly cut onion in some oil first, then add the pumpkin chunks, stir/fry for some minutes, before “extinguishing” with the vegetable broth. Add the optional ingredients if you want. Let it all cook on low heat, until you can squash the pumpkin with the ladle easily (takes approx. 1 hour maybe?). Take off the heat, let it cool down a little and either use a blender or hand held mixer pole to liquidize.
Heat it up again, add as much cream as you like and serve with roasted pumpkin seeds and/or add some pumpkin seed oil – Done.
Note: make sure you invite enough guests, or freeze the rest, or don’t add any spices and use the pure pumpkin mush as baby food.
Apple Sauce
(also very easy – one of my FAVORITES)
1kg of apples (or 4 giant apples like they sell them here, see picture below)
Important: the type has to be good for cooking (hard, acidic etc.), forget about sweet types or Granny Smith – terrible
Fresh lemon juice (from real lemons, squeezed by yourself)
Lots of cinnamon & some vanilla sugar or extract
Optional: fresh cranberries, fresh ginger, Cardamom
Take a big enough pan, put approx. 2 cm of water in it. Cut the apples in medium-sized chunks (you can peel them if you prefer or the apples are “waxed” – Europeans, you are lucky there, as they don’t want to make the apples look shiny). Drizzle some lime juice over the apple pieces to prevent that they turn brown. Add the cinnamon and vanilla as well as any other optional items you like.
Cover the pan, let it cook/simmer (approx. 1 hour maybe?) until you can squash the apples easily with the ladle. That’s for me where it’s done, you might prefer to put it into the blender or take a hand mixer to it, or put it through a strainer…feel free.
Note: you can make a big quantity and keep it in the fridge pretty much for forever, or freeze it or again – don’t add any spices and use it as baby food.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away!
