Pumpkin Soup

Yeah, two soups in two nights.

This pumpkin soup is a recipe that I think I made up myself many years ago (like 6). It is the easiest thing in the world, is really cheap, and kinda healthy.

I start off with the following: half a butternut pumpkin, an onion, two cloves of garlic, a litre of vegetable stock, a little bit of butter, and some olive oil (those two brown lumps in the picture are stock cubes).
I chop the onion fine, the pumpkin into nice sized chunks, and crush the garlic. In a big saucepan (which is a pressure cooker with a missing lid) I melt the olive oil (about two tables spoons, it depends on how rich you want it) with the butter, and start sauteeing the onion and the garlic.
I keep cooking the onion and garlic until bits of brown start to stick to the pan on the bottom and sides. I deglaze the pan with some of the stock (deglazing is just pouring a small amount of liquid into the pan to get the gunk flavour off the bottom). Once the liquid boils off, the brown will be back on the onion and garlic. This has the effect of caramelising the onion slightly, which is where the real flavour of this soup comes from.It is hard to see in the picture above, but it is slightly brown. I then stir in the pumpkin a bit to cover it in the onion/garlic mixture, and then pour over the stock.I bring this to the boil and then simmer it until the pumpkin is nice and soft. Once this magical point has been achieved (about ten minutes of good simmering), I pour off some of the stock, and use a stick mixer to puree the pumpkin, onion, garlic and a little bit of the stock. Keep adding stock until the right consistency is achieved. I find stick mixers are great because they are a bit random, and you get little lumps here and there. This recipe makes about two big bowls. Serve it with some nice bread. You can mix cheese in if you like.

Result
As always, beautiful. This time it was particularly orange for some reason, which I guess depends on the pumpkin. This one was from Woolworths so that's probably why. The soup was really sweet, and the pumpkin was really out the front. Underneath that was the tang of the garlic and the caramelised onion. In the past I have found that the more you caramelise the onion, the more the garlic comes out, and you can get a really nutty roast garlic flavour. You can also deglaze with white wine, which adds an extra layer of flavour, but can be too rich. My wife sometimes has it with cheese, I generally don't as it is rich enough in my opinion.

We're out to dinner tomorrow for my best man's birthday, so I might do something on the garden. Happy eating!