Look no further for inspiration to make the most of your Halloween Pumpkin this year. I give you Harissa Spiced Pumpkin & Sweet Potato Soup…
No other vegetable screams Autumn more than the Pumpkin. From early October onwards, cavernous boxes land at the entrances of supermarkets up and down the land, piled high with deeply orange orbs. Yet by the turn of November, they are gone – disapparated away until the same time next year.
The organisation Hubbub runs an annual campaign called Pumpkin Rescue. They claim that a staggering 15 Million pumpkins are binned every Halloween in the UK which, by their calculations, is sufficient to provide a bowl of Pumpkin Soup to everyone in Britain. In an effort to tackle such staggering waste, they encourage people to rescue redundant Jack-o-Lanterns and turn them into delicious and nutritious meals.
One of my favourite recipes for using up a Pumpkin is my Harissa spiced soup. It really couldn’t be easier to make, requiring only a few minutes standing at the stove. The oven does most of the work by firstly steaming the vegetables, before quickly roasting them for the final twenty minutes. Not only is this recipe vegetarian, but it can also be made vegan friendly if you opt for a dairy-free veg stock.
For a spooky addition to your Halloween table, why not team this soup with a batch of my Ghoulish Finger Dough Sticks?
No pumpkin to hand? Substitute with a butternut squash to make this autumnal soup at any time of the year…
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Harissa Spiced Pumpkin & Sweet Potato Soup
- Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Yield: 8 1x
Ingredients
- 1200g pumpkin or butter nut squash
- 3 medium red onions
- 600g sweet potatoes
- 6 cloves garlic
- 4 tbsp harissa paste
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1.5l veg stock
- 1 x 440ml can coconut milk
- Salt
- Pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/Gas Mark 6.
- Cut the onions into 8 equal-sized chunks. Peel and cut the Pumpkin and Sweet Potatoes so that the chunks are about the same size as the onion segments. Finally, peel the tissue paper wrappers off six cloves of garlic and put all of the vegetables into a large roasting tray. Toss together with 3tbsp of the harissa paste and the olive oil (ensuring every piece is well coated) before enclosing the top with a sheet of foil. Place in the oven for 40 minutes.
- When the timer is up, remove the foil from the tray and give everything a good stir. Turn the temperature up to 220C/430F/Gas Mark 7 and replace the uncovered roasting tray back in the oven for a further 20 minutes.
- When the final twenty minutes is almost up, take a large pan and measure in 1.5l of vegetable stock and the can of coconut milk. Place on a medium heat and bring up to simmer. When the vegetables are ready from the oven, carefully ladle them into the pan alongside all the juices. Stir through the final tbsp of harissa paste and give everything a blitz with a stick blender until you have a smooth soup. Check to taste before seasoning with salt and freshly milled pepper.
- Serve with warmed crispy bread or perhaps try my Ghoulish Finger Dough Sticks for a spooky All Hallows’ Eve supper.
- Prep Time: 15 Minutes
- Cook Time: 1 Hour
- Category: Soup, Halloween, Autumn
Keywords: soup, halloween food, pumpkin soup, harissa, spooky food
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