Last Friday after the May races I was feeling extremely delicate. How old am I going to be before I realise that gin and tonics are not an adequate substitute for food? It was a fantastic day as always, and beats any day at Flemington hands down. I am going to gloss over the "incident" of a horse in the Grand Annual leaping a two metre high fence into a crowd of onlookers who were outside the track. Enough has been said already. It was a most unfortunate freak accident (not many horses can jump that high).
Friday, then, was a day for ugg boots, lighting the fire and a bit of cooking. Every time I walk into the pantry I have to pass three of these:
which the hunter and gatherer husband bought home from a duck shoot over Easter. Time for action, I thought to myself, and so I made some soup. I often cook the pumpkin for soup in the oven, which is lovely, but due to my weak condition I decided to throw the onion and garlic in the roasting pan as well. Worked a treat.
There are no specific measurements to this recipe, just use what you have and just cover with the stock.
Preheat the oven to 180c. Peel, seed and chop the pumpkin. I used about half of the above. Place in a large roasting tin and add a chopped onion (or a couple of leeks would be good too) and about 5 cloves of garlic, not peeled.
Season with s & p and drizzle with olive oil. Put in the oven and bake for about 50 minutes. At this point I went outside to do some gardening and forgot about the pumpkin. It probably had about an hour and 15 minutes and was a little charred on the edges, but it didn't seem to matter.
Put it all in a large saucepan and squeeze the garlic from its skin. Cover with chicken stock. Heat gently so the stock is warm. Whizz with stick blender or in a food processor. Season with salt and pepper and a little nutmeg and some cream to finish. I crumbled over some Meredith Dairy goat's cheese and chives from the garden.
Helped the hangover enormously. We then went out on Friday and Saturday night so by Sunday I was beyond doing much at all. I do not expect much on Mother's Day and the Little Princess bought me this charming treasure from the Mother's Day stall at school, (which I paid for). She also wrote a very sweet card which makes it all worthwhile.
Look how well my cauliflowers and spinach are growing... I only put them in the other day
as well as the garlic and rocket..
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