Secret Weapon #2 Pumpkin Soup

                                

    As promised, a Pumpkin Soup post in time for Thanksgiving!!!

    This Soup. This Soup. Ooooooooooh MAMA, this SOUP. It's about bloody time I posted about it :) It is, in fact, one of my most favorite dishes to make, and one of the most requested dishes in my repertoire :) This Pumpkin Soup, like the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake I posted about awhile back, has the distinction of being one of my culinary SECRET WEAPONS. This soup is money in the bank :) I've served it to the pickiest of picky eaters and they practically lick the bowl clean :)

   However, because I am the product of the cooks I grew up with, I cannot and will not take all the credit. I first had this soup a very long time ago when I was just a wee LynnieBee. We had gone to Albany for Thanksgiving at my Uncle Bob and Aunt Emily's house. I was probably 9 or 10. My Aunt Emily served this Pumpkin Soup as the first course of the Thanksgiving Dinner, and everyone pretty much lost their minds. Smooth, Rich, Golden, Creamy, it's like drinking distilled Autmn :) My Mom got the recipe from my Aunt that day, and it has been part of our Thanksgiving (and occasionally Christmas) Feast ever since.

   A few years ago, I got tired of waiting for the Holidays to come around, and started making this soup for other occasions: birthdays, dinner get-togethers, or really any time in the dark months of the year when I had the ingredients on hand and was in the mood for it or someone asked for it :) To me, this is an Autumn/Winter/Holiday soup through and through, but if the urge strikes you in June, grab some canned pumpkin and rock it out, no judging ;)

  This one won't let you down. Ever. I promise :)


Pumpkin Soup
(originally from Aunt Emily, inherited by Carolyn, and put forth by me, Lynn:)
 - 7 tbsp butter (Yes, there is approximately one stick of butter in this soup. Yes, I am okay with that. Keep in mind, that is the amount of butter in the entire batch.When you look at it on a per serving basis, it's no more butter than you might spread on your toast in the morning. If it really bugs you, you can switch out about half of the butter for EVOO, but there will be a drastic difference in flavor)
 - 6 scallions/green onions, coarsely chopped
-  1 onion, sliced (you'll be straining out the solids, so don't fuss over chopping it finely, a quick rough chop is all you need)
 - 3 cups pumpkin puree (NOT pumpkin pie filling!) or 2 1/2 lbs pumpkin
 - 6 cups chicken stock (broth is fine too)
 - 1/2 tsp. salt
 - 3 tbsp. flour
 - 1 cup light cream or half&half
 - thickly sliced crusty bread or croutons for topping 

- Melt four (4) tablespoons butter in a large saucepan. Saute scallions and onion until soft and golden.

- Add pumpkin, chicken stock (or broth) and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Let simmer for about 10 minutes or until pumpkin is soft.

- Strain solids from soup with a slotted spoon or or run soup (carefully!) through a mesh strainer and return to pot.

Mix flour with two (2) tablespoons butter (I usually mash them together with a fork) and gradually whisk into soup.

- Bring soup back to a boil, whisking occasionally, until soup thickens.

- Correct the seasoning and then add the light cream or half&half and the remaining tablespoon of butter. (oh, and if you feel bad leaving that one lone tablespoon of butter in the wrapper, toss it in there, no one will complain ;)

- Serve garnished with cubed fresh crusty bread or croutons (my personal favorite kind of bread for this is Rosemary Olive Oil, but any kind of good fresh crusty bread is fine)

 NOTES: 1.These photos were taken at our October Book Club Meeting (hence the gorgeous tablescape and other deliciousness present on the table.Thank you Merlyn for the loan of the lovely Pumpkin Tureen!!!) A member was supposed to be bringing homemade bread, but she had a last minute emergency and was unable to make it, so the soup appears here unadorned. Believe me, as wonderful as the croutons are, the soup does not need them, it's equally delicious plain :)

                 2. If you want to give the soup a bit of a kick, add a few dashes of hot sauce or a little curry powder.

                 3. As I said above, if the amount of butter in this recipe is off-putting, you can swap out the first four (4) tbsp of butter for an equivalent amount of extra virgin olive oil, and omit the cream from the end of the recipe, but please know the taste will be affected. It won't taste bad, just different.

                 4. This soup can be made ahead of time. If you make it the night before, just stop before you add the cream and last tbsp. of butter. When ready for service, reheat and stir in cream and the last tbsp of butter.

                5. This recipe is for a single batch, when serving it for holiday gathering, we double this recipe.

Taste this and fall madly in love, it's that simple :)

Happy Thanksgiving, Foodie Friends, I Love Ya :)

Lynn :)

Easter Pie in Nana's Basement :)

 Hey Foodie Friends,

This one is actually a repost from last year. Today was Easter Pie/Pizza Chiena Day at my Nana's house, and even though there's no specific recipe in this post, doing this photo study last year was a really fun project, and I want it to get a little more air time. So, an oldie but relevant goodie from last year's archives, enjoy!

Lynn (4/1/12)


Hello Darlings :)
  This post was a long time coming, because I wasn't quite sure how to present it to you all. The weekend of Palm Sunday, we (Mom, Mikey, cousin Sharon, Nana, Boppa, and I) made Pizza Chiena, or Easter Meat Pie, in the basement kitchen of my grandparent's house. Yes, my Italian grandfather has a full kitchen in his finished basement. I'll pause for any obligatory Italian stereotype jokes or comments that need to be made........................................okay, there we go :) But I digress. My grandparents have made Pizza Chiena for every year of my life, and probably for a very long time before that. They make a bunch of pies and then give them out to family and friends for Easter, just like they do with fried dough on Saint Joseph's Day in March, but that's another blog post:)

 I'm not really sure what is particularly Easter-ish about these pies, other than the fact that they contain ingredients that are often traditionally given up for Lent; eggs, red meat, cheese, etc (btw, the literal translation of *Pizza Chiena* is *Pizza Pie*). So, by the time Easter rolls around, after forty days of Lenten fasting, these rich meat pies with their sweet dough crust are beyond indulgent. As I said, my grandparents make these every year, and I have often helped with the preparation in years past. I missed a few years recently whilst living in Rochester, or sometimes I was in a show that ran through the Easter weekends, but this year I was at their disposal. I brought along my trusty camera to document the experience and present it here to all of you :)

  But here's the thing. The more I looked at the photos from that day, and the more I tried to compose a blog post around them, the more I thought that what I wanted for this particular post was for it to be more of a photo study of cooking with my family, rather than a few paragraphs and a recipe regarding the same. Someone way wiser than me once said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and in this case, I think I agree. I could wax poetic all the live-long day about what cooking with and for my loved ones means to me, but I think the photographs speak for themselves, and I should let them. Don't get me wrong, it's not that they're especially spectacular photos, because I am most certainly not a spectacular photographer, but I feel they do a good job illustrating the essence of cooking with my family. Also, small confession, I do not have my own copy of this recipe, it is my Nana's, and I didn't get a chance to write it down. I'm oddly okay with this, though, there's always next year, and, like I said, this get-together wasn't necessarily about an ingredient list :) Look at the photos and you will be able to cobble together how these pies are made, but I hope that is the least you get out of them :) Enjoy :)

Love You All :)
Lynn