When have you stayed in a place for just two nights and have actually hoped that they serve you the same food for dinner on both nights? I did! What got me was good old pumpkin soup! In South Indian homes, we have our rasams. They are gloriously warm in colour, spicy and sour at one go, and just flow down the throat. We drink it, eat it with rice and profess our undying love to it. We do not have a history of ‘soup’, we get our dose of liquid for the soul in rasam! I have tasted pumpkin in kootus (a curry or vegetable with a gravy) or sambars (a gravy mixed into rice and devoured), but do we soup our pumpkin? No, or so I thought.
But once you call it parangikkai soup, life’s good again… because it sounds warm and comforting.
I first tasted this soup in Chettinad, Tamil Nadu at a resort called visalam. Once the evening was upon us, we made our way up the narrow steps, to a dimly lit terrace over looking a dark cover of leaves, interspersed with a few white-and- grey rooftop terraces.
We chose a table tucked in the corner. There were yellow lamps along the parapet, lanterns on every table and cane chairs with small cushions. The large fan, with rounded blades and a slow whir, moved air around in a languid fashion that hardly helped keep the sweat off our foreheads. There is something about that right amount of heat and sweat that makes food taste even better. As we sat down, there was a distant hoot of the train followed by the closer ‘chug chugg chug chugh’ as it went by.
The server came by and served us the soup of the day. In a plain bowl, there lay a swirl of yellowish orange with a tiny piece of crisp wheat bread (or rusk) on the side. The soup was delicious, luscious and lent itself to loud slurps. The sweetness of the pumpkin made even sweeter and smooth with coconut milk, flavoured with bay leaf, onion, garlic and pepper…
I came back the next day, hoping it would be there again… sadly, it wasn’t. So I did the next best thing, I asked for the recipe!
Ingredients:
pumpkin 250 gms
onion 50 gms
garlic 10 cloves medium sized
bay leaf (bay leaf) 2 nos
oil 2 teaspoons
peppercorns / from the pepper mill 5 gms (around 10, if you like the soup to be peppery.I use it from the mill so that its super finely ground even without the mixer having a go)
water 750 ml to 1 litre (I like my soup thicker so I put only 750 ml)
coconut milk 100 ml. (their recipe says 200ml, I add half the quantity)
salt to taste
Method:
– peel the skin of the pumpkin and cut into pieces
– heat oil in a pan
– temper with bay leaf, add chopped garlic and onion. saute well.
– add pumpkin, saute for 10 to 15 seconds. add the water and allow to boil till the pumpkin is soft
– cool down and blend. I like it to be a smooth puree
– bring to boil, add salt and finish with the coconut milk. turn off the heat.
Serve it in pretty soup bowls with some bread on the side, or make a meal of soup and salad (that’s what happens at my home). It is
the best for a rainy day or when things aren’t going your way…
It’s easy to make and goes from firm pumpkin to slushy soup in 20 mins max!