Pumpkin-Pear Soup

Serves 6 to 8

This is a Soup Peddler original. It's supposed to taste more or less like it's made of pumpkin-flavored SweeTarts. I first unveiled the recipe at Boggy Creek Farm, whose owner you'll meet later in the story. It was a bit of a performance art piece involving a Ghanaian dagger, a Costa Rican machete, a Spanish broadsword, a selection of pumpkins, a few incendiary devices, and a tuxedo. No animals were harmed in the making of this soup recipe.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
4 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and diced
1 (30-ounce) can pumpkin purÈe
4 cups water
1 tablespoon amchur powder, dissolved in 1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon mace
2 tablespoons brown sugar, or to taste
2 (12-ounce) bottles pear cider
2 cups half-and-half
Salt

Heat the vegetable oil in your soup pot over medium heat, then sauté the onion, carrots, and apples for 10 minutes. Decrease the heat, cover, and sweat for about 10 minutes more.

Add the pumpkin and water, stirring until well dissolved. Bring to a simmer and decrease the heat to low, lest you provoke volcanic upwellings of boiling pumpkin. Better cover it, come to think of it.

Once all the ingredients are soft, remove from the heat and purée with an immersion blender; alternatively, working in batches, purée in a regular blender until smooth, then return to the pot.

Add the amchur solution, mace, brown sugar, pear cider, and half-and-half and stir until the sugar dissolves and everything is thoroughly combined. Season to taste with salt, adjusting the sugar and salt to balance the sourness of the amchur. Serve hot.

Buy the Book!

from:
The Soup Peddler's Slow and Difficult Soups
Recipes and Reveries
by David Ansel
Ten Speed Press
$16.94 (CAN $23.95)
192 pages; Paperback
ISBN: 1-58008-651-9
Recipe reprinted by permission.