Double Take: Creamy Southwestern Pumpkin Soup

"This is the soup that never ends....It just goes on and on my friends. This girl just started making it not knowing what it was and she'll continue eating it forever just because....."


This soup was my pick. I saw pumpkin. I read the recipe but apparently didn't process it all in my mind. While I normally sometimes read and really think about what something will taste like and how the textures will be when I look at recipes, for some reason I processed this as something like a sweet butternut squash soup...only with pumpkin. I didn't think about it being a thick creamy soup, I just kept on going. Well, its thick and creamy. I learned I really like one bowl of it. I rather enjoy the second bowl. By the time I hit bowl #4, I can't force myself to finish it. Moral (for me): Make sure I have other ppl to eat this soup in the future or just freeze the rest of the pumpkin so I don't get so tired of eating the same thing.

Now the sensible person that I am started this soup before going to work one morning. (Good idea. Not that the soup takes long but sometimes when I come in from the lab, I'm ready to eat, not wait an hour or so to prepare something.) It only took about 15 minutes to reheat and pulse to a smooth texture. No problem. The industrious part of me decided I wanted to make bread bowls from which to eat the soup. This really wasn't a bad idea. It really should have worked but when I got up that morning, the weather was against me. It was pouring rain. In spite of running a heater below the bread for an hour, the yeast refused to budge. I sat the bread dough in the microwave, covered it and hoped for the best. I returned home to find the bread looking almost exactly the same as when I'd left that morning (about 10 hours earlier). There was only one thing to do...go to the grocery deli and get substitute bread.  That got me to thinking...how do deli's make sure their bread rises everyday? Do they run a dehumidifier? If anyone knows, let me know. I may ask a random local bakery or two if no one reading happens to know. I also wondered, how did they get bread to rise daily when everyone made their own bread everyday and didn't have dehumidifiers. My guess is there's a simple solution. Anyone?

I started to toss the dough. Then I hesitated and sat it back in the safety spot of the microwave. When I checked on it the next morning it had risen! (The rain stopped and the humidity fell.) I placed 4 ramekins upside down on a baking sheet and wrapped bread dough around them. By evening they were ready to bake.  I popped them in the oven for about 10 minutes at 350 until they browned. Then I flipped them over, removed the ramekins and baked about 5-7 minutes more. They came out great! I reheated soup from the day before and it was great!

Creamy Southwestern Pumpkin Soup in a homemade bread bowl

Creamy Southwestern Pumpkin Soup 
(as featured in the All New Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook)
modifications are in italics

Ingredients

• 2  tablespoons  butter or margarine
• 1  large onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
• 1  jalapeño pepper, seeded and chopped
• 2  garlic cloves, minced (I doubled them, shocker.)
• 5  cups  chicken broth
• 1  large baking potato, peeled and chopped (about 2 cups)
• 1 1/4  teaspoons  salt
• 1/2  teaspoon  chili powder
• 1/2  teaspoon  ground cumin
• 1  (15-ounce) can pumpkin
• 1/4  cup  chopped fresh cilantro (I used closer to 1/3 c.)
• 2  cups  milk
• 3  tablespoons  fresh lime juice
• Garnishes: sour cream, fresh cilantro sprig

How To:

Melt butter in a medium pot over medium heat. Add onion, jalapeño pepper, and garlic; sauté 15 minutes. Add chicken broth and next 4 ingredients; cook, stirring often, 30 minutes or until potato is tender. Remove from heat, and let cool slightly (about 5 to 10 minutes).

At this point, I took the soup off the heat and did the rest when I got home. 

Process potato mixture, pumpkin, and cilantro, in batches, in a food processor or blender until smooth, stopping to scrape down sides.

Return to medium pot; stir in milk, and simmer 10 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Stir in lime juice; garnish, if desired.

REVIEW: I thought this was a good soup. I would definitely eat a bowl of it again...in the distant future. I got a little burnt out on it after eating most of it myself. Ruthann didn't like it. Becky liked it ok. I think if it had about half or a quarter of the cumin, I'd have enjoyed it more. More lime juice might've helped as well. Overall I'd eat this again but I wouldn't make the whole recipe. I'm only one person and have a limit to how many leftovers of creamy soup that I can force myself to eat. The bread bowl was tasty. I used the recipe from Norwegian cooking night for the bread. Be sure to go for the higher amount of the cardamom. 

Pop over to Mel's blog to see what she thought of the Southwestern Pumpkin Soup.