Call me basic, but I love pumpkin. I love it in savoury and sweet dishes, for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I love pumpkin in all its shapes and sizes, so today I wanted to make something with this bottle gourd I bought. I will only be using half in this recipe, so you can save half to make another recipe, like my favourite pumpkin curry. That recipe will be online soon, so if it is not already, come back later! This recipe is more of a lunchtime soup, seeing that it is very light. I pair this with sesame breadsticks to make it more of a filling meal, but you could of course serve it with bread, plain breadsticks, croutons or some form of vermicelli. But let’s not waist any more of your time and start making this soup!

Ingredients for 4 big bowls of soup:

–          Half a bottle gourd (around 700 grams) – any pumpkin would work

–          A medium sized onion

–          1 Stock cube (vegetable or herbs)

–          1 L of boiling water

–          A hand full of fresh thyme – you could probably use around 1 tbs of dried thyme

–          Some form of bread(stick) to serve with your soup

Recipe instructions

1.       Cut up your bottle gourd into cubes, make them around 1 cm/0.5 inch. If you make them bigger they will take longer to cook

2.       Cut up your onion into pieces, the size doesn’t matter too much

3.       Add a stock cube in to a pan, and add a litre of boiling water

4.       Add your pumpkin and your onion to the pan. Remove the thyme from the stalks and add it in to your pan

5.       Boil for around 15-20 minutes, until the pumpkin is tender

6.       Take an immersion blender and blend until smooth. If you only have a blender, let the soup cool, add it in to the blender and then blend it until smooth. After that, you can reheat the soup in a pan on the stove or in the microwave.

7.       Serve in four bowls with your bread or breadsticks, and garnish with some thyme stalks. I added some freshly ground black pepper to the top.

8.       Enjoy!