Pumpkin and chestnut soup, with wine pairing
One of the greatest pleasures when autumn arrives is pumpkins! I always get very excited when the first pumpkins arrive at my local market. My favourite pumpkins are the Potimarron (red kuri squash) and butternut squash , they are deliciously naturally nutty. Great for this pumpkin and chestnut soup!
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
🥘 Main ingredients
Main ingredients;
- Pumpkin
- Boiled chestnuts
- Roasted garlic
- shallot (or onion)
- truffle or nut oil
- garnish for some crunch
This soup is so easy to make, yet so delicious. It is rich, nutty, and smooth like velvet. Lovely with some freshly baked bread.
The Ingredients for this soup are minimalistic. The natural flavours of the pumpkin and the chestnut are so full and rich that it doesn’t need much more.
🥗 Serving suggestions
I have made this soup with just some added water (and a little plant based milk) But you could of course use a vegetable stock, in which case you probably need to use less seasoning.
The pumpkin and chestnut soup is garnished with toasted seeds – pumpkin & sunflower seeds. But this soup would be great topped with crispy roasted chickpeas, spiced hazelnuts, or any other nuts. It adds a little crunch to this super smooth soup.
If you like the autumn ingredients as much as I do, check out some of my other typical autumn dishes, like;
🍷 Wine pairing
Some would say, Wine with soup? But because we often eat soup as a main course, I say… Why not?
Pumpkin and chestnut soup; sweet, nutty, soft and creamy. I would straight away say a beautiful round chardonnay would work wonders here. But you might want to try an off-dry to medium chenin, or an Alcasian riesling can be quiet interesting with this soup.
Check out this recipe, and let me know if you used any other pumpkins, and how they turned out. I would love to hear from you, and to see your pictures. Don’t forget to add @haricoco1 to your Instagram posts , so we can share, and create together!
📋 Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- 1/2 butternut squash or other pumpkin about 500 grams, roughly chopped
- 90 grams approx. 12 chestnuts boiled chestnuts
- 1 shallot chopped
- 4 cloves of roasted garlic
- 500 ml (2 cups + 2 Tbsp) water
- 100 ml (⅖ cup) plant based milk
- salt
- pepper
- 1 Tablespoon truffle oil or nut oil
- Garnishing; a handful of toasted pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds
Instructions
- Sauté the chopped shallots in olive oil with a pinch of salt.
- Once translucent, add the roasted garlic cloves, the chopped pumpkin, and the chestnuts. Stir around for a couple of minutes so the flavours release.
- Add the water , and leave to simmer (covered) until the pumpkin is well cooked. (20-30 minutes)
- Leave to cool
- Once cool, blend and add slowly some of the plant based milk until you get your desired thickness.
- Sieve , for a smooth silky soup, and re-heat.
- Season with extra salt and pepper.
- Serve the soup with some toasted seeds on top.
Notes
This soup freezes very well. Let it cool down and freeze it in separate portions.
For the garnish, I have used toasted seeds, but you can use many other garnishes for this soup. Like; roasted chickpeas, roasted and/or spiced hazelnuts, mushrooms, or any other nuts or herbs.