Serves 4
Ingredients
1kg pumpkin, peeled, seeds removed, cut into 3cm pieces
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
3 teaspoons chopped sage leaves
70ml olive oil
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, cut into 3cm pieces
250g chopped bacon rashers
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
1¼ litres (or 5 cups) chicken stock
120g goats cheese
To serve: pepitas (pumpkin seeds) lightly toasted
Method
Preheat your oven to 180⁰C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
Place the pumpkin, cumin, sage and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large bowl and season, then toss to combine. Tip onto the tray, arrange in a single layer and roast fro 10-15 minutes. Add apple and cook for a further 10 minutes or until tender.
While all that is doing its thing, heat another 2 teaspoons of oil in a frypan over a medium heat. Add baconand cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until golden. You don't have to use oil for this part if you don't want to, the bacon will generate its own oil once it heats. Tip the bacon onto some paper towels.
Heat the rest of the oil in the same frypan. Best you add it this time. Add the onion, garlic and a pinch of salt, then cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes until softened.
(Now, in Katie's recipe she suggests putting all this in the blender bit by bit. I don't do that, I find that fiddly and time consuming. But you can do that if you prefer. For me, I prefer to get out a massive pot, and stick all the gear in that, then use my stick blender.)
So, doing it my way, tip the pumpkin mixture, 2 cups of stock and half the cheese into a big pot, then blend it all up. Add the remaining stock, give it a bit more of a blend, then cover it up and cook for about 20 minutes or until it has reduced a bit.
To serve, sprinkle bacon, seeds and remaining goat's cheese over soup.
