Butterfield 9’s Chef Michael Harr: Pumpkin Soup

I had people over last night, a couple of whom are in town for the Marine Corp. marathon.  Since I didn’t know when they’d arrive with the weather being what it was, I wanted to make something that didn’t need too much work.  The menu: pumpkin soup for the first course, my mom’s Virginia barbecue and Melissa Clark’s brussel sprout slaw with walnuts and grated machengo cheese for dinner. Dessert was carmel apples.

I tried this soup a couple of weeks ago with Dusty Lockhart, Amanda McClements and Erin Zimmer at a dinner on a similarly rainy night. It was so damned good. I’ve had three or four other pumpkin soups at restaurants since, and still enjoyed this one the most. We were convinced there was a ton of butter and cream.  There isn’t.  And it’s relatively easy.  Needless to say, thanks, Chef Harr.  My guests freaked out over it and everyone had seconds. Some even wiped the bowl clean with bread.

The recipe:

6 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil – 1 clove mashed garlic – 3 shallot bulbs, thinly sliced – 1 small onion, thinly sliced – 3 celery stalks, thinly sliced – 1lb diced pumpkin, skin removed (use one that’s deep red, like a kuri)- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme – 1.5 tablespoons kosher salt – 1 teaspoon white ground pepper – 2 tablespoons sugar- 6 cups veggie stock – 2 tablespoons cold butter

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Peel skin off pumpkins. Place on a baking sheet with 2 teaspoons salt and 2 tablespoons olive oil. Roast until soft, about ten minutes.

In a medium saucepan,  add celery, shallots, garlic, onion, and sweat for about four minutes. Add pumpkin to saucepan, along with veggie stock. Add thyme. Bring to a boil, then simmer until everything is soft.  Once it’s soft, pour into food processor with salt and sugar. Puree.  Add butter and puree again.  Garnish with pancetta, diced apple, and goat cheese.

Despite that I had just worked with gourds last week, I almost stabbed myself in the gut trying to get through the sugar pie and kabocha I picked up from Whole Foods.  I wanted a kuri, but I hadn’t memorized types of heirloom squash to remember the differences (note to Whole Foods: label your pumpkins).  I was seriously spastic for, like, five minutes until my mother called and reminded me to put them in the microwave for a couple of minutes to soften them up. Duh.   After that, things went pretty smoothly. 

Instead of ten minutes, I followed chef Weland’s instructions for last week’s kabocha crepes and roasted the squash for nearly an hour.  Not sure if that was the right thing to do, since I’m guessing had I just softened it and added it to the other ingredients, it would have been a bit more complex than doing it my way. 

At the end after pureeing, my soup was super thick and I was out of vegetable stock, so I added a splash of Half and Half and garnished with toasted pumpkin seeds and diced honeycrisp.

Though the soup was a hit, it wasn’t as good as Chef Harr’s because. . . . I didn’t let it simmer on the stove? I added Half and Half?  I didn’t use kuri pumpkin? I’m not a professional chef? Who knows. It was still the best part of the meal. Oh, and before I garnished it one of the guests thought I was serving a big bowl of cheese, like the kind you put on nachos. Funny.

(photo courtesy of Butterfield 9)