Recipe: carrot and pumpkin soup

It’s good to warm up after a long walk, and how better than with a bowl of homemade carrot and pumpkin soup?

This time, we’re sharing a tasty recipe using carrot and pumpkin by Annette van Ruitenburg, author of the De Smaak van Texel (The Taste of Texel) cookbook.

If you are on Texel during the autumn months, you can buy pumpkins from various roadside stalls, such as the cart on Pontweg, and Texel carrots are available from Novalishoeve and Texelse Kost, among other places.

You will need

1 small pumpkin, with the flesh chopped into chunks
3 carrots, white, yellow or orange, in chunks
1 large sprig of rosemary
half teaspoon of sea salt
olive oil
25 grams butter
1 large onion, chopped
curry powder, to taste
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock
salt and freshly-ground pepper
parsley, finely chopped

Pre-heat the oven to 200 °C. Put the chopped pumpkin and carrot in an oven dish with the rosemary, sea salt and olive oil. Roast the vegetables for about 25 minutes, until they are done. Take the pumpkin and carrot out the oven and discard the rosemary. Check whether the pumpkin’s rind is soft enough; if the pumpkin is very fresh, you do not usually need to remove the rind.

Heat the butter in a pan, fry the onion and add the curry powder. Add the stock and then the carrot and some of the pumpkin. Allow everything to boil gently for a few minutes. Purée the soup and add the remaining chunks of pumpkin; season with salt and pepper. Lastly, garnish with the finely chopped parsley.

Halloween tip: engrave your pumpkin

You can engrave pumpkins; use a small knife or gouge to carve a text into the rind. It will make a scar in the pumpkin that will heal after about four weeks, which is the best time to harvest the pumpkins.