Meet Johan, our resident pumpkin this year + pumpkin soup with crispy sage recipe.

Exactly a year has passed since my last Halloween post in 2019 and guess what, it’s Halloween again! I’ve already explained all about the (lack of) Halloween celebrations in Slovenia and a bit about its general history in that post, so go check it out if you haven’t already. This year I’m only sharing our new resident pumpkin – Johan, and two more pumpkin foods, because obviously pumpkin food is the best part of carving out a pumpkin. 🙂

P.S.: The reflection makes Johan look like he has boobs, so who knows?

Pumpkin soup

This year’s pumpkin soup was a bit different than last year, because we made it a proper cream soup, topped with crispy sage leaves.

Since I am now occasionally sharing recipes as well, I figured I should share this one too:

Pumpkin cream soup with crispy sage recipe

Ingredients (for 2-3 people):

• 600 g (2 cups) of pumpkin puree
• 1 medium sized onion
• 1.5 tablespoon of butter
• 1 cup of cooking cream
• 1 teaspoon of sage
• 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of sweet paprika
• salt
• water
• 4 whole fresh sage leaves per person

Prep time: cca. 30 minutes

Instructions:

Chop the onion and puree your carved out pumpkin meat (you can also blend them together in a blender first). Roast both on 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan for about 10 minutes to maximise the pumpkin flavour, then add all the spices and about a cup of water. Leave it to boil and cook for about 10 more minutes, blend the soup until smooth if you haven’t already, then reduce the heat and mix in the cooking cream and cook for a few more minutes (be careful that your soup doesn’t boil over because of the cream).

Meanwhile, wash and dry the sage leaves, then roast them whole on a 1/2 tablespoon of butter in a small separate pan until they’re nice and crispy. Serve the pumpkin soup in plates or bowls and add the roasted sage leaves on top. Enjoy!

Notes: Since I decided to add sage to this particular pumpkin soup, I kept all the other flavours a bit subdued, as I would normally also add turmeric, ginger and curry to a pumpkin soup. I should add that sage only works with pumpkins that don’t have a very strong flavour, so don’t try this with a Hokkaido pumpkin. That goes better with warm, turmeric and curry flavours. Nutmeg, however, is the quintessential pumpkin spice for all of them for me.

Pumpkin muffins

We also finally managed to make pumpkin muffins! At first I wanted to make a pumpkin cheesecake, but was a bit appalled at the idea of buying a whole kg of cream cheese, so I discovered this recipe for pumpkin cheesecake muffins in a deep Google dive. We tried it out and it is absolutely amazing!

We also replenished our stock of roasted pumpkin seeds by drying them in the oven with a bit of salt and oil. Considering how many we got out of a single pumpkin, it would be a shame to waste them.

Besides eating pumpkin food, we’re going to watch a scary movie, but we haven’t picked one yet. What did you do for Halloween? Show me all your pumpkins and stay safe while the spirits and lost souls wander the Earth!