The bright orange of this soup almost outshines its sheer simplicity - it screams, "Look how colourful I am!", distracting from his simple, silky, pumpkin-ness. Sweet and orange, topped with anise-flavoured fennel shavings and olive oil, this soup adds a bit of sharp, acidic freshness to an otherwise drab winter's day.
Fennel is something I'm never 100% sure about. I have a love-hate relationship with anise flavours, loving a bit of fennel seed in yogurt dips, obsessing over the faint whispers of star anise in a stir fry, but somewhat sceptical of the role of thin, crisp fennel shavings in salads, on its own, or in any other context. Then I realised - it just needed to be in the right place, at the right time.
Fennel shines with freshness and crisp winter bite in this soup, tossed over the top at the last minute to add a cool note to a warm, sweet soup. A good dose of pepper, tossed through the fennel and stirred into the soup, warms the back of the palate and rounds the whole thing out. For so few ingredients, there's a lot of powerful flavour here: raw, as it should be, pumpkin, fennel, and pepper at their best.
*****
1 onion
5 cloves of garlic, peeled, left whole
2 cups chopped pumpkin, I used a blue pumpkin
3 cups vegetable stock
1 head fennel, thinly sliced
olive oil
salt and pepper
1. In a large saucepan, sauté your onions and garlic in a bit of oil over medium heat. Once the onions start to soften, toss in the pumpkin and cook, stirring, for another minute. 2. Pour over your stock, deglazing the pan, and bring to a simmer. Cook for 1 hour. 3. Remove from heat, season, and blend with an immersion blender until light and smooth. Reheat over low heat. 4. In another bowl, toss together some fennel, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Serve soup ladled into shallow bowls, topped with some of the fennel shavings.
- Follow RecipesDream
- Follow @us
