Roasted Pumpkin & Pear Soup

There comes a time when the wife of a chef has to dig in and do the dirty work. Lucky for me I like to cook but I’m still getting used to just whipping things together as I’m more of a recipe girl. But sometimes (just sometimes in my case) throwing caution to the wind pays off.

Our fruit bowl was overflowing with apples, pears, persimmons, pumpkin and winter squash. I stared at it thinking, what to make….what to make….

I love pumpkin soup. I love pears. Why not?

With a little guidance from the hubby I whipped up a delicious twist on the usual pumpkin soup and it was fabulous.

RECIPE:

Serves 4

2 small Sugar Pie pumpkins – roasted

3 medium pears (I used 2 D’Anjou and 1 red Bartlett just because that’s I had in my fruit bowl) – peeled, cored and chopped

1 large leek

2 tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 tsp fennel seeds – crushed using mortal and pestle

7-9 cups organic veg broth

salt & pepper

DIRECTIONS:

After you’ve roasted the pumpkin scoop out the pulp into a food processor or blender. It’s easier to do this while the pumpkin is still warm and best to do in batches. Put a little broth into each batch to help puree the pumpkin. This should make about 2 1/2 cups of puree.

Trim the root end and most of the green part off the leek, slice in half lengthwise and thinly slice. Rinse well in a strainer under cold water.

Preheat a soup pot on med heat for a couple minutes. Add in olive oil followed by the leeks. Saute for 3-4 minutes or until softened. Add the fennel seed, stir and saute for a minute or so then add in the pears. Saute for a couple of minutes so the flavors begin to marry. Add in pumpkin puree, a pinch of salt and pepper, stir, then add in 6 cups of vegetable stock. Let simmer for about 20-30 minutes or until the pears are soft. Taste and season accordingly.

I used an immersion blender to puree the soup but you could easily use a blender as well. Just be sure to blend in batches and not to overfill the blender (hot liquids expand).

Rich, sweet and surprisingly a little buttery tasting sans the butter. Deeeelish.

All recipes are made with the finest quality farmers’ market whole foods, natural and non-processed ingredients as much as possible.