Pumpkin Soup with Spicy Seeds

I'm on the fence about non native authors of books of recipes of foreign foods. On one hand I appreciate that they edit their material with the best intentions to provide me with something that is going to suit my palate and be possible to make up with the available ingredients. On the other hand I want authenticity. However, I'm realistic enough to accept that the flavour of food you've eaten on holiday is affected by the the sun, the sea breeze, the personality of the seasoned old man in the kitchen, and a million other things. It's impossible to recreate.

David Leite is a second generation Portuguese immigrant from America who spent a few months travelling across the old country collecting the recipes for this book. It's mainly restaurant dishes, which may somewhat justify the myriad of processes required to produce a simple pumpkin soup. Don't do what I did and try to make this for dinner after work, it takes about 2 hours from start to finish.

You put the pumpkin, sage and onion in the oven and while they roast you make the spicy seeds to garnish the end product. I didn't have the energy to mess about with the seeds from the actual squash I was using so used sunflower seeds for this step. When the vegetables are cooked you combine with the stock and blend. Deadbeat me would start eating at this point, but the recipe insists that you absolutely must put the mixture through a fine sieve so I felt compelled to. The whole 20 minutes that this took I was thinking that this is something I would do for a baby, grownups with proper teeth shouldn't have their food pureed to this extent. And don't even get me started on how much washing up this generates.

You return the soup to the pan, dilute a little with water and serve. By this point you will be so hungry that you might not want to take the time to savour the delicate interplay of flavours, but take my word for it, this is a very good soup. It's velvety and tastes creamy despite having no dairy. There is a slight hint of sage, the nicest use of that herb I've experienced in the last month, no dusty, heavy Christmassy overkill here. And the cayenne heavy seeds are amazeballs.