Pumpkin Soup with Pumpkin Seed- Mint Pesto

Cover recipe from Sunset, October 2011
Pumpkin Soup with Pumpkin Seed- Mint Pesto

I love Sunset Magazine.  I love that it’s full of travel stories and places I feel I must visit soon.  I tear out pages and keep them in my “vacation” folder for times that my husband and I are looking for somewhere new to visit.  The recipes in the magazine are almost always winners.  Sometimes they’re recipes featured from places traveled, and sometimes they’re just features based on the season.

This month’s cover of Sunset Magazine- Living in the West is beautiful.  There’s no doubt about that.  It displays a pumpkin soup in miniature roasted pumpkins, with earthy fall dinnerware to boot.  It’s perfect for October.  The cover is highlighting Tasty Fall Soups & Stews- Recipes to Warm Up Your Weeknights.

There’s a lot more to the recipes in the food section of the magazine this month than just soups and stews. There are also quick & easy dinners, a few Moroccan recipes and a fall salad.  The cover recipe actually comes from a feature on cooking with pumpkin called, “Beyond the Pie.”  There is Cashew, Coconut and Pumpkin Curry, Pumpkin Gingersnap Ice Cream, Caramelized Orange Pumpkin Flan, and then there is this soup. Read my tips below to see what I thought of this cover recipe…

Pumpkin Soup with Pumpkin Seed- Mint Pesto
Source: Sunset, October 2011

ingredients:
Soup:
1 large onion, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 large garlic cloves, chopped
2 teaspoons ground coriander
4 1/2 cups peeled, 1-inch chunks pumpkin or other orange fleshed squash (from a 2 1/2-pound squash)
4 1/2 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Pesto:
1 small garlic clove
1/3 cup fresh mint leaves, plus slivered leaves
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup salted roasted pumpkin seeds

1. Make soup: Saute onion and ginger in oil in a medium pot over medium-high heat until golden, 5 minutes. Add garlic and coriander and cook until softened, 1 minutes, then add pumpkin, broth, salt, and pepper. Simmer, covered, until pumpkin is very tender, 8 to 10 minutes. Puree in batches in a blender until very smooth.
2. Make pesto: Pound garlic, whole mint leaves, salt, and 1 tablespoon oil in a mortar into a coarse paste (or use a food processor). Add remaining oil and pumpkin seeds and pound until coarsely crushed.
3. Drop small spoonfuls of pesto over bowls of soup, garnish with slivered mint, and serve remaining pesto on the side.

To make mini pumpkin bowls (6): Cut a thin slice from the bases of 6 mini pumpkin so they sit flat. Set on a rimmed baking sheet, rub with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake in a 400 degree F. oven until tender, 40 to 45 minutes. Cut off 2-inch-wide lids. Carefully scrape out seeds with a small spoon. (If you get a hole, line pumpkin with a piece of foil.)

Serves: 4 or 5

Nutritional information per 1 1/2 cup serving: 263 calories, 8.3g protein, 21g (3.4g sat), 13g carbohydrates, 2.6g fiber, 406mg sodium, 23mg cholesterol

Tips from Culinary Covers:
*I used pie pumpkins for this recipe.
*I’m not sure coriander was the right spice for this soup.  Maybe curry would have worked better?
*The soup didn’t stay bright orange as the magazine photo indicates- it turned a rather unappetizing orangish-brownish color, and it really was void of any flavor.  I was hoping the pesto would save it.
*Making the pesto: If you don’t have a mortar & pestle or a mini food processor, this pesto is impossible to make.  It’s too little of a batch for a regular-sized processor.
*The pesto calls for roasted and salted pumpkin seeds.  I would think they are talking about pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds) but the recipe does not indicate pepitas.  To me, pumpkin seeds are the seeds that come directly out of the pumpkin.  This was confusing.
*The pesto couldn’t save the soup either.  Mint was an odd choice to pair with the flavors in this soup (what flavors there were), and it just tasted awful to me.
*Regarding making the pumpkin bowls in the oven- kind of a silly question, but why does the recipe call for making 6 pumpkin bowls when the recipe says that it only serves 4 or 5?  My pumpkin was tender and ready to cut into a bowl at about 25 minutes.  If I had let it go the full 40 minutes, it would have been brown and mushy.
*It’s rare that I dislike a recipe so much- especially one that is a cover spotlighted recipe- but this soup was “inedible.”  A few bites, and a few attempts to doctor it up with more salt, pepper, spices and then it was dumped in the trash.  What a waste of perfectly good ingredients.

Did this recipe deserve the cover spotlight? Absolutely not- for all of the reasons mentioned above.  A cover recipe should be something to celebrate and something super flavorful and wonderful to eat- not just a pretty picture.  The cover recipe should have been the amazing-looking Brandied Cranberry Short-Rib Stew tucked into their Stews and Brews section.  I’m dying to try that one, but perhaps that’s just a pretty picture too.  I’m hoping not…

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Tagged as: soup recipes, sunset magazine