Apart from their many health benefits, pumpkins are once again an eye-catcher. You will find them at vegetable markets, farm shops and wholesalers. The pumpkin (Cucurbita), a large berry in a botanical sense, offers versatile enjoyment. It is suitable for baked goods, soups and vegetable dishes. Oil extracted from pumpkin and roasted pumpkin seeds are equally healthy and delicious.
Few calories, nutrients and vitamins characterise the world's most giant “berry”. For example, 100 g of fruit flesh has only 25-30 calories (kcal). This fruit has plenty of beta-carotene, calcium, potassium, and magnesium. Another plus is the vitamin A and a considerable amount of iron.
Caution should be exercised with home-grown pumpkins. In addition to back mutations, unintentional cross-breeding with pumpkin plants can occur. Like ornamental pumpkins or wild pumpkin plants, the latter contain so-called cucurbitacins. These can lead to poisoning symptoms, such as diarrhoea, palpitations and nausea. Bitter-tasting pumpkins should, therefore, not be used in the kitchen. Better dispose of them sensibly.
The cucurbitacins stem from different pumpkin varieties. Like the ones in shopping centres, farm shops and vegetable markets.
Pumpkin soup with ginger, curry and turmeric
- Wash, dry, peel (peeler), and seed two medium-sized “Orange Knirps” pumpkins. Rinse again and cut into quarters.
- Wash 2-3 ginger sprigs, peel and cut into small pieces.
- Pour water with some coarse sea salt into a large pan.
- Add pumpkin and ginger and cook until soft.
- Puree. The soup should be thick at this stage. If not, add a little more water.
- Add 4-5 tablespoons chives, dried or fresh. Then, 4-5 tablespoons parsley dried or fresh. Furthermore, add two tablespoons of curry powder yellow/mild and one of turmeric. Last, use two tablespoons of pepperoncini flakes dried and four bay leaves.
- Continue to simmer for 20 minutes. Stir from time to time.
- Stir in 2 dl pure coconut milk. Season with soy sauce (possibly vegetable stock powder fat-free) to taste.
- Simmer for another 10 minutes.
- Garnish with broccoli rabe lightly pre-cooked in mild salted water. Add roasted pumpkin seeds and a dash of pumpkin seed oil.
- Seasoned tofu baked in the oven or Stirnrunzler's Focaccia go well. (see Ligurian Flatbread with Rosemary – Focaccia)
- The pumpkin soup can be sealed well in the refrigerator for three days and reheated.
4 replies to "Pumpkin soup with ginger, curry and turmeric"
It’s also been proven too that Pumpkins are rich in potassium, which can help regulate your blood pressure, lowering your risk for heart attack and stroke. They also improve renal capacity of the kidneys too. But a quick one here is refrigerating for few days, does it reduce the quality of nutrients as its effect would be better taken immediately?
Thank you for this insight. You will lose nutrients. Frozen vegetables can be better than fresh regional vegetables on the market. It depends on food chains, quality, soil, production methods, etc. I would store food for up to three days in your fridge. Better only one day longer. You can freeze your precooking. There are glass containers on the market that allow freezing. We recommend, whenever possible, glass containers for the freezer and the fridge.
Wow, will definitely try this soup. Might serve it during Grandma’s birthday too
It’s not common the way we dsipose our vegetables without knowing anything about their contriobutions to out health, I had no idea pumpkins were this healthy, thanks for the info.