You’ve carved the pumpkin, now let’s cook! My favourite pumpkin recipes.

You probably carved your pumpkin a day or so ago, or you may even be like me and leave it until literally just before Halloween to keep it as fresh as possible, either way you now have a tonne of pumping that needs cooking (especially if you have more than one child!!) and no idea what to cook with it.

Well, first thing is first, get all the pumpkin flesh into the fridge until you know what you are doing. It doesn’t keep great outside of the fridge and is likely to be all slimy the following morning if you don’t! I thought I’d share my favourite pumpkin recipe. Highly unoriginal, its a soup. I just don’t think that you can beat soup at this time of year, it’s something that I always think is so darn tasty and filling, especially served with warm, crusty bread – which you could make yourself using pumpkin seeds. Just saying.

My favourite Pumpkin Soup:

2 onions, roughly chopped

1kg of pumpkin flesh, deseeded, stringy bits removed.

1 carrot, roughly chopped

1 sweet potato, roughly chopped

1 clove of garlic

800ml – 1L chicken or vegetable stock (I prefer chicken, but if you are vegetarian then you can use vegetable too!)

250ml cream (optional)

1- 1 1/2tsp curry powder

butter or oil for frying

Fry the onions and garlic in the butter/oil for a few minutes until they are turning translucent, then add the curry powder. Fry for 20 seconds.

Add the chopped carrots, pumpkin and sweet potato and fry for around 2 mins, just to warm and coat with the onion and curry mixture.

Add the stock and simmer for approximately 30 minutes, until everything is very soft. Blend. You can add cream if you want to, it does just finish off the soup perfectly, but if you are wanting a healthier version then don’t.

Enjoy, Harriet x