Pumpkin Mushroom Soup
Remember that jack o’lantern I roasted and squeezed all the water out of? I took that flesh and made a delicious pureed soup. You can, too! Around here, chanterelle mushrooms are in season, one of my favorite times of year for that reason. I can eat a ridiculous amount of chanterelles. If they’re around long enough, they’ll go into my dressing on Thanksgiving. Otherwise, I’ll have to settle for shitakes. The horror!
The thing about the squeezed out flesh of a pumpkin that size is that when you add liquid back to it, it balloons in volume. I mashed in some roasted elephant garlic and a stick of butter in a stockpot and just started pouring heavy cream and white wine in. It just kept absorbing it like a sponge. I took half of that mash out and used it as a mousse for some beef tenderloin at an event. There was a gallon of it as mousse.
For the soup, I took the remaining half gallon of mousse and added about a gallon of vegetable stock and some carmelized Walla Walla onion, which I then pulverized together in the VitaMix. Then I topped that goop with sauteed chanterelles and Oregon white truffle oil. If there ever was a flavor of the Pacific Northwest, this is it.
Pumpkin Mushroom Soup
Ingredients
- 1 half gallon pumpkin puree *see note
- 1 gallon vegetable stock
- 1 large sweet onion I used a Walla Walla
- 1 stick butter
- 1 lb chanterelles cleaned and chopped **see note
- 1 cup white wine
- Truffle oil for garnish
- Kosher salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- In a saute pan on medium high heat, melt a stick of butter with the sliced onion. When the onion starts to brown, turn the heat down to low and cook for about thirty to forty minutes stirring a few times to prevent burning. Add splashes of white wine to deglaze as the onions carmelize. Meanwhile, clean and chop the mushrooms and set aside. In a stockpot, gently heat the pumpkin mousse on low with the vegetable stock, stir in the carmelized onions keeping the pan you cooked them in on the side, and puree in a mixer working in batches. Put all the pureed soup back into the stockpot. In the same pan you used to cook the onions, saute the chopped mushrooms for about ten minutes on medium low heat and set them aside. Season with salt and pepper until you're happy with the taste. Serve the soup with a couple of tablespoons of mushrooms and drizzle with the truffle oil.
Notes
