The Ultimate Easy to Prepare Vegetarian Recipes Cookbook - Pumpkin and Apple Cream Soup

Pumpkin and Apple Cream Soup

Ingredients:

Pumpkin                                  1 cup

Apples                                     1 cup

Matignon                                 ½ cup

Garlic, minced                         1 tablespoon

Flour, all-purpose                    1 tablespoon

Cream                                      ½ cup

Vegetable stock                      2 cups

Salt                                          Season to taste

Pepper, white                          Season to taste

To Prepare:

The first thing we need to tackle is the matignon. Matignon is a combination of white onion, celery, carrots, and leeks in equal parts. If you don’t have leeks, double the amount of onions. They are roughly chopped to about one centimetre sized cubes and are essential flavouring agents for most stocks and soups. The difference between matignon and mirepoix is all about size. Mirepoix is bigger than matignon, about two centimetres by two centimetres and a half. Knowing which one to use is all about cooking time; use matignon of cooking time is less than an hour and mirepoix if the food will take an hour or longer to cook. Also, using words like matignon and mirepoix is a great way to sound like a culinary pro!

To get started on the cream soup, wash the ingredients that need washing. Peel your pumpkin and chop up the flesh into roughly one centimetre cuts. Core your apple and roughly chop it, also in about one centimetre size cuts. Take the garlic and mince and you’re all set.

In a large pan on medium heat, pour enough olive oil to coat your ingredients. First thing to do is to cook the matignon so that you can extract all those great flavors from the vegetables. When they’re tender, add the garlic; make sure to constantly stir so that the garlic doesn’t burn. Add the pumpkin and apples and cook them until slightly tender.

When all the fruits and vegetables are in the pan, sprinkle the flour in and allow everything to cook. Season with a little salt; it’s better to add small amounts of salt in stages for seasoning. 

When the fruits and vegetables are slightly tender, add the vegetable stock. You can also use vegetable stock; both are neutral stocks and can be used for just about everything. Let your soup simmer until the ingredients are breaking down and are close to becoming mush. At this point, you can take the soup and pour into a blender and blend or use a handheld blender and just stick it into the pot. When using a regular blender, make sure that your mixture isn’t too hot for your blender to handle.

When you’ve blended everything, you can either toss everything back into the pan or run the thick liquid through a strainer for a smoother, silkier soup. Let it simmer and reduce until you get the consistency that you want which is usually not to thick but not too thin. That’s when you add in the cream.

Don’t forget to season with salt, pepper, and maybe a little sugar. Can’t have cream and other dairy products? Even if you leave out the cream, you’ve still got a pretty amazing pumpkin and apple soup.

If you’re a lacto-ovo vegetarian, you can garnish with a little whipped cream on top of the soup and a pinch of cinnamon.

So there you have it, a basic cream soup. Want an asparagus cream soup? Switch out the pumpkin and apples for asparagus instead. Same goes for mushroom cream soup, creamy pea soup, or cream of corn soup. Your imagination is the limit!

Can’t have cream in your soup? Not to worry, just don’t add cream and you’ll have a basic vegetable soup. For the spiced tomato soup, just add cumin, coriander, and turmeric according to your taste and simmer with a cinnamon stick and cardamom. With herbs and spices, a cream-free soup can be just as great.

You can turn your soups into ‘cappuccino-style soups’ by serving it in a cup and by hand-blending milk until its frothy and scooping some of the froth onto the soup cup. This will be even easier if you’ve got a milk frother handy. Sprinkle with some cinnamon or another spice and you’ll have some fancy presentation to go with your soups.

Now that we’ve got soups pat down, we need to start thinking about its best friend – the sandwich.

Now, you’ve probably been eating sandwiches your whole life. I could tell you that sandwiches are all about finding fruits and vegetables that are in season but that could be a no-brainer. Instead, I’ll concentrate on telling you about the different types of sandwiches you can make, a few different sauces and spreads, and how easily you can turn a sandwich into a canapé for your next party.

The sandwich is the easiest meal in the world. You basically get a piece of bread, ideally brushed with butter or extra virgin olive oil, and filled with practically anything you want. The idea behind butter or olive oil isn’t just to add fat to your food; it’s to act as a moisture barrier between the bread and the filling.

A sandwich in its most basic form is probably an open-faced sandwich. Just take a slice of bread, any bread, brush it with a little olive oil and top it with any filling you want like sliced tomatoes marinated in a fruity vinaigrette or a few slices of cheese and salad greens. A great example of an open-faced sandwich is the Tomato Basil Bruschetta.

This is an excerpt from the book:  The Ultimate Easy to Prepare Vegetarian Recipes Cookbook