Janet’s Thai Pumpkin Soup
Janet’s Thai Pumpkin Soup
Janet Nixon of the yacht Navire joined our pumpkin party with the most delicious Thai pumpkin soup. Pumpkin is grown all around the Marshall Islands and all her other ingredients are available in Majuro.
- 4 cups peeled pumpkin pieces
- 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
- 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 teaspoons chicken stock powder
- 1.5 cups hot water
- 1 tin coconut milk (substitute: 1.75 cups freshly made coconut milk)
- 3 teaspoons fish sauce
- 2 limes, juice from
- 3 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoons chili sauce or to taste
- In a heavy bottom pot heat the oil
- Add pumpkin and onion and saute for a few minutes
- Add enough hot water to just cover the pumpkin, less if the pumpkin is watery
- Add chicken stock
- Bring to boil, then simmer with lid on till pumpkin is soft. Turn heat off.
- Add coconut cream, fish sauce, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, sugar, and chili sauce.
- Blend in food processor or with blender stick
- Adjust flavors
- Tips: This soup has sweet, sour, salty, hot, and umami (meaty) flavors, as do the taste buds on our tongue. To get a dish to sing in your mouth you need to balance these flavors.
Taste the soup then decide – if it needs to be:
• Saltier: add more fish sauce and/or chicken stock (just a small amount at a time)
• Sweeter: more sugar
• More sour: lime juice and rice wine vinegar
• Umami (meaty): fish sauce and/or chicken stock
• Hotter: add tiny amounts of chili – remember the heat from chili does increase a little when heating a dishKeep adding these flavors. I find I usually have to use all of them in varying amounts, one at a time until it works.
Whenever possible, make the soup in advance so the flavors can meld (join together) and improve. Then reheat just before serving and keep adjusting.
Over time this adjusting will become just a part of the way you cook, as it probably already is.Soup can be made the day before.
