What are you planning on this year Halloween which is just two days away on Sunday, 31 October 2010? This year there are a lot of exciting Halloween activities found in most tourist attractions such as Singapore Night Safari, Sentosa (spooky event) or even some restaurants or pubs are having Halloween parties and special dining menu to brings up the spooky atmosphere.
For this coming Halloween, I would like to share with you our quick and easy "not so" spooky Halloween treat which is the "Pumpkin Soup" and "Spooky Pizza".
For those who frequent my recipes site I am sure you would notice that I hardly touch on any western soup. This is because I always have a mind set that it would be rather more complicate to prepare Western type compare to Asian. But since these few weeks there are a lot of pumpkins on sales, I decided to get some and try out my very 1st western-style pumpkin soup.
Here are some of the ingredients and steps for making the pumpkin soup. Actually when you look at this step-by-step photo explanation above, making some restaurant quality of pumpkin soup is not as hard as what we thought of.
Ingredients: (serves 2 )
10g Butter
1/2 Tablespoon Olive Oil
100g Large Leek, sliced thinly
350g Pumpkin(without skin), cut into cubes
150g Potato(without skin), cut into cubes
300ml Chicken Stock
100ml Water
20ml Pouring Cream
Garnishing:
1 Tablespoon finely chopped fresh spring onion
1 Teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
20ml Pouring Cream, optional
Method:
1. Heat butter and oil in a stock pot, cook leek stirring on and off until soften.
2. Add in pumpkin and potato into the leek mixture and saute for another 2 - 3 minutes on low heat then add in the chicken stock and water.
3. When the mixture comes to boil again lower the heat, covered and simmer for about 30 minutes then off the heat.
4. Cool the soup till room temperature, blend it in two batches until smooth.
5. Return the soup to the soup pot and bring it to boil on low heat.
6. Slowly stir in the pouring cream then season it with salt to taste.
7. Serve soup with extra cream, dash of spring onion and freshly ground pepper together with some toast of your choice.
Note:
~ You can replace spring onion with chives if you prefer.
~ It is optional to season the soup with salt as it would depend on individual preference.
With about an hour of cutting, simmering, blending and etc. Finally this is my very first batch of western-style pumpkin soup. I love the smooth and creamy texture of this soup that is lightly infused with a hint of leek and pumpkin fragrant. The adding of potato cubes also act as a thickening ingredient to this soup so that the end product would be more creamy and filling. Everyone of us loves this soup and it indeed boost up my confident to try out more western soup in the future.
In order to pair with the pumpkin soup for a more "horror/spooky" feeling, we decided to make some Halloween theme pizza to go with it. I use the pitted black olive to make a cute little "spider" on the 1st pizza above and Lychee stuffed with pitted black olive for eyeballs on the scary "monster face" below. And I am sure you could also whipped up something interesting for this coming Halloween Treat with your creative mind and whatever ingredients you have in the pantry. For more photos about this post, you can click HERE.
Lastly I would like to wish everyone a Happy Halloween on this coming Sunday. So do you want Trick or Treat????????
For this coming Halloween, I would like to share with you our quick and easy "not so" spooky Halloween treat which is the "Pumpkin Soup" and "Spooky Pizza".
For those who frequent my recipes site I am sure you would notice that I hardly touch on any western soup. This is because I always have a mind set that it would be rather more complicate to prepare Western type compare to Asian. But since these few weeks there are a lot of pumpkins on sales, I decided to get some and try out my very 1st western-style pumpkin soup.
Here are some of the ingredients and steps for making the pumpkin soup. Actually when you look at this step-by-step photo explanation above, making some restaurant quality of pumpkin soup is not as hard as what we thought of.
Ingredients: (serves 2 )
10g Butter
1/2 Tablespoon Olive Oil
100g Large Leek, sliced thinly
350g Pumpkin(without skin), cut into cubes
150g Potato(without skin), cut into cubes
300ml Chicken Stock
100ml Water
20ml Pouring Cream
Garnishing:
1 Tablespoon finely chopped fresh spring onion
1 Teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
20ml Pouring Cream, optional
Method:
1. Heat butter and oil in a stock pot, cook leek stirring on and off until soften.
2. Add in pumpkin and potato into the leek mixture and saute for another 2 - 3 minutes on low heat then add in the chicken stock and water.
3. When the mixture comes to boil again lower the heat, covered and simmer for about 30 minutes then off the heat.
4. Cool the soup till room temperature, blend it in two batches until smooth.
5. Return the soup to the soup pot and bring it to boil on low heat.
6. Slowly stir in the pouring cream then season it with salt to taste.
7. Serve soup with extra cream, dash of spring onion and freshly ground pepper together with some toast of your choice.
Note:
~ You can replace spring onion with chives if you prefer.
~ It is optional to season the soup with salt as it would depend on individual preference.
With about an hour of cutting, simmering, blending and etc. Finally this is my very first batch of western-style pumpkin soup. I love the smooth and creamy texture of this soup that is lightly infused with a hint of leek and pumpkin fragrant. The adding of potato cubes also act as a thickening ingredient to this soup so that the end product would be more creamy and filling. Everyone of us loves this soup and it indeed boost up my confident to try out more western soup in the future.
In order to pair with the pumpkin soup for a more "horror/spooky" feeling, we decided to make some Halloween theme pizza to go with it. I use the pitted black olive to make a cute little "spider" on the 1st pizza above and Lychee stuffed with pitted black olive for eyeballs on the scary "monster face" below. And I am sure you could also whipped up something interesting for this coming Halloween Treat with your creative mind and whatever ingredients you have in the pantry. For more photos about this post, you can click HERE.
Lastly I would like to wish everyone a Happy Halloween on this coming Sunday. So do you want Trick or Treat????????
I love the fun pizzas! how creative!
ReplyDeletethe pizza are so cute!
ReplyDeleteKAWAI!!!
ReplyDeleteAny recipes for Deepavali?
Crustabkes & Jess thanks for yr comments :)
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: I am not good at cooking Indian dishes :)
Hi
ReplyDeleteWould like to check with you. What do you mean by pouring cream? Whipped cream?
Hi may I know what is pouring cream?
ReplyDelete