Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Garlic Bread

About 30 years ago I stopped at a little country restaurant and I ordered a bowl of pumpkin soup. It was so delicious that I asked the chef what made it so good. The chef told me they roasted the pumpkin and the garlic before making the soup. Over the years I've added a few touches of my own including roasting a few other vegetables. And because I'm already cooking a whole bowl of garlic for the soup I'll show you also how I make garlic bread that I like to serve alongside it. It's one of those recipes I've been making for years because it's simple to make, it's economical and it tastes delicious. Now if your pumpkin doesn't taste good the soup won't taste good so I always cut off a little bit and boil it to see what it tastes like. And this one tasted good. And remember that when you do roast it it also brings out a lovely flavour in the pumpkin. It's a Kent pumpkin. I love using butternut pumpkins too because butternut pumpkins are generally safe, they generally taste really good. I normally do this by eye but I'm going to weigh it for you once I cut it all so I can put the measurements I've used today in the recipe on the website. And I cut the pumpkin into fairly large chunks. And this soup freezes beautifully so I always make more than I need. And that's 1.3 kilo of cut pumpkin, peeled and cut weight. I also love a couple of carrots and they add a lovely sweetness to the soup and they're orange. And I cut these smaller because they take longer to roast than the pumpkin and that's 165 grams of carrots. I also like a bit of sweet potato, not too much but that adds also a little bit of sweetness and richness. But you know if you don't have some of these vegetables you don't have to add them. This is just how I do it and sometimes you know I might add a bit more sweet potato, a bit less carrots, it's quite forgiving. And I chop these a little bit smaller because they also take longer to roast than the pumpkin. And that's 350 grams of peeled, cut sweet potatoes. Now I also add some potatoes because I feel a pumpkin soup is almost too strong without some potatoes to mellow the flavour. And they also make the soup lovely and creamy. These are lovely red little potatoes. I actually made my roast potatoes with these last night, they were beautiful. They were so fluffy in the middle. Roasting all the vegetables gives the soup a lovely deep flavour. And that's 450 grams of peeled, chopped potatoes. And these get roasted with all the other vegetables. Now I generously drizzle with olive oil or your choice of oil, whatever you like. And a little bit of salt. And I make sure they're all covered with a bit of oil. Now before I put them in the oven I'm going to roast some garlic as well. If you don't like using foil you can always put a bit of baking paper inside of the foil. Mum and Dad bought these for me. I hope they're Australian. So I just put a bulb of garlic and generously drizzle it with oil. And then wrap it up like that. The baking paper version. And pop them on the tray. And now my oven's preheated to 190 degrees celsius fan force which is 210 conventional. So that's been only 20 minutes and I'll just turn them over a little bit. And I'll pop them back in the oven for at least another 20 minutes but probably more like 30. Now onions go into the soup and I like to caramelise them. And you can caramelise these early and when they're ready just turn it off on the stove if the vegetables aren't ready by then. And I've got 300 grams peeled. And because the soup's going to get all blended in the end you don't have to cut these fine. I just cut them into large sort of chunks. Now I just use oil. You could use butter but by using oil it also makes it dairy free. And so I just cover the bottom of my stock pot which I'm going to cook the soup in with some oil. Well initially I start them off a little bit higher. And then just over a gentle heat I let them caramelise for probably a good 15 minutes. And stir them from time to time. So the onions have slowly slowly been cooking for about 15 minutes now. And that's enough. They've got some nice colour on them. They're really soft and translucent. I'm just going to turn them off while I wait for the vegetables. So the vegetables have had 50 minutes all up. And they're right. They're done. That's enough. And if I take a skewer, everything including the potatoes and the carrots are tender. And they've got some nice colour. And they just have a really lovely intense vegetable flavour. So I'll remove the garlic little bundles. And then I'll tip this into the pot. And then I add just enough water to cover the vegetables. I can always thin it out more later. But I like a pumpkin soup to be quite thick. And then I add 4 rounded teaspoons of veggie stock powder. Or you could use chicken stock. I love veggie stock powder in a pumpkin soup. I turn the heat back on. And I bring it to the boil. And I might just add a touch more water. And all up that was 1,200 ml. And when it does come back to the boil, I just maintain a steady simmer and let it simmer away while I unwrap the garlic to put in the soup. And you know, you can add as little or as much garlic as you please. I'm also going to make garlic bread. And you know, when it's roasted like this, you can add more garlic because it's a lot more mellow. And these are tiny little cloves, which make it that little bit more difficult. And if you pull the cloves apart and squeeze the garlic cloves out, oh, it's super hot still, they'll come out beautiful. And this makes the best garlic bread. So I'm going to put about that much in the soup. So that's a good tablespoon of roasted garlic. So into the soup it goes. Just give it a good stir. Now I'm going to leave that for just another 10 minutes. And do you know what? I'm just going to add the rest of that one bulb of garlic. And you'll notice I haven't got any spices in here, no cumin, no nutmeg, but you can totally go ahead and do that. But I really enjoy this pumpkin soup just with the vegetables personally. That's been bubbling away for another 10 minutes just after I added the garlic, so all the flavors can get to know each other. And now I just use a stick blender and I blend it until it's smooth or you can use a stand blender. And that's smooth enough for me. And now is the time to taste it for seasoning. Oh, that's lovely. I'm just going to put a bit of pepper in it. And I'm just going to put a bit of salt in. Now you can put cream in this if you like or sour cream. At this stage, this is actually vegan. And this is how I used to serve it at my cafe and people loved it. But what I like to do these days, if I'm adding cream or sour cream, I just put it in the bowls if people wish to have it. And now I put the lid on while I make the garlic bread. So if you have some and I've just got that much left in the garden, fresh parsley is always nice in garlic butter. So I'll just finely chop this little bit of parsley I have here, stalks and all. Now if you make too much garlic butter, you can just freeze it. It freezes wonderful. And pop that into a bowl together with the roasted garlic and some butter. Now soft butter. I have a big block of butter here. I probably won't use all of that. So I'll just cut a bit and weigh it. 225 grams of butter. And what I really think tastes wonderful in a garlic bread is just a teaspoon of mixed herbs, that old-fashioned herb. A little bit of pepper. Now if you're using unsalted butter, I would put salt in it, but my butter is salted. And then using a fork or your hands with some gloves on probably, just mulch that all together, well mix it all together. And preheat the oven to probably the same as I roasted the vegetables, 190 degrees fan force Celsius or 210 Celsius conventional. Garlic bread is so easy to make and I think it's infinitely better than the stuff you can buy at the supermarket. So I asked Mark to buy me a French stick and he bought me a toga loaf, which will work. But a French stick is sort of traditional. And I'll cut this in half, it's more manageable. And all I do is nice thick slices, almost down to the base, but not cutting through. Then I get just a plain old butter knife and generously butter between each slice, pulling it apart and putting a big blob in between each bit. Now sometimes if I have it, I put a little bit of finely grated parmesan cheese into this garlic butter, makes it even more rich. And I won't forget about that end piece, just a smear of butter on that. And the same with this one. Now you can prepare this now and pop it in the fridge or the freezer and make a lot of these at a time and then just get them out and directly either put them in the oven or defrost them in the fridge. And you don't have to be as heavy handed as I am with the butter. But then I get any remaining butter and spread it on top of the garlic bread. I've actually got another little bit left over from last night's dinner because I've got more garlic butter left. And I'll pop one in the oven now, probably one in the freezer and one for everyone tomorrow. Waste not, want not, I'll get every bit out. And I simply get a large piece of foil and a bit of baking paper. And that does two things, it prevents the butter from sticking to the foil. And secondly, you know, foil doesn't get a really good wrap these days. And what I like to do is tent it up the top and seal it good at the ends. I'm going to bake these in the oven like this for about 15 minutes. And then I'm going to open them up and put them back in for five to 10 minutes until they're nice and brown. And if you wish, at that point, you can add some grated cheese. So the garlic bread's been roasting for 15 minutes. And actually, it's already got brown here. But I'm just going to pop it back in the oven for about five minutes, or not even that, just while I dish up the soup. If you want to put cheese on, now's a good time to put some cheese on. But I think we'll leave it plain today. There's enough flavour in there just with the garlic butter. I have some very distinguished guests today. So who've made a lot of pumpkin soup in their time, and who have also eaten a lot of pumpkin soup? Look at the colour of that. It's just lovely. And my mum said to me that she does like a little bit of cream. So I'll just do a little bit of a swirl, a bit rustic, and you can get a toothpick or a knife and just run it through it a couple of times. Delicious. I'm not a big fan of soup, but this one is really delicious. Fantastic. Thank you so much for watching, mum, dad, Mike, me, everyone enjoyed the soup, and they loved the garlic bread. Hopefully I'll see you again soon.