Chinese pumpkin, butternut (nutmeg), acorn… French chef Hélène Darroze shares recipes for pumpkin soup and ice cream.
“In Aquitaine, pumpkin used to be cooked from the first days of autumn. Back then, she was not considered “noble enough” to be served in our family restaurant, but at home she was a real queen of the table every day. Pumpkin soup… This is perhaps the main recipe of my childhood. Today, this is the product that I can incline and conjugate ad infinitum, especially since there are so many types of it: Chinese pumpkin, butternut (nutmeg), acorn … They were completely forgotten yesterday, but today they are back in fashion. My girls, Charlotte and Kitri, absolutely love making pumpkin soup with me. They like to clean it from the inside in order to get all the seeds for themselves and fry them. In the recipes that I wrote, I tried to move away from the classic versions of pumpkin soup and casseroles. Pumpkin chocolate ice cream was the idea of Kirk, my London chef. Variations on the theme of this vegetable have become for me a real ode to autumn, that time of the year when I especially miss my favorite places in the south-west of France, with their bright smells of forest, mushrooms and harvested crops … “
Read more:
- Sun pumpkin
Pumpkin soup
For 6 people
Prepare: 30 minutes
Preparation: 3 hours 10 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 pumpkin weighing 1–1,5 kg
- 1 clove garlic
- 3 bay leaves
- 30 g duck fat
- 1 l chicken broth
- 125 g whole milk
- 125 g cream
- Half handful of sage
- 120 g whipped cream
- Salt pepper
Preparation
Cut the lid off the top of the pumpkin. Take out the fibers and seeds, sprinkle the inside of the flesh with salt and pepper, put the garlic clove (instead of the skin), bay leaf and spread the duck fat. Place in an oven preheated to 120 ˚С and leave there for 3 hours. In the finished pumpkin, separate the pulp. Grind with a blender, wipe through a sieve, add chicken broth. Stir.
Boil the sage. To do this, boil milk and cream, pour them over sage leaves and let it brew for about 15 minutes. Strain through a sieve and add salt and pepper to taste. At the last moment, beat with a mixer.
Before serving, bring the soup to a boil and add the whipped cream to make it quite thick. Top with prepared sage infusion in milk.
Pumpkin ice cream with chocolate sauce
For 6 people
Prepare: 20 minutes
Preparation: 3 hours 10 minutes
Ingredients
For ice cream:
- 250 g pumpkin pulp
- 0,5 liters of milk
- Xnumx powdered milk
- 200 g of egg yolks
- 125 grams of powdered sugar
For chocolate sauce:
- 310 g whole milk
- 120 g dark chocolate
- 40 g of milk chocolate
Preparation
Place a piece of pumpkin wrapped in foil into an oven preheated to 120 ˚C. Bake for 3 hours. Then remove the pieces of pulp with a tablespoon and dry in a deep frying pan. Cool down.
Heat the milk in a saucepan along with the dry milk. In a bowl, beat the yolks with sugar until white, then gradually pour in the hot milk. Then cook like an English cream. Remove from heat and pour through a fine sieve. Pour the cream over the pumpkin, cool, pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and make ice cream. Store it in the freezer.
To prepare the sauce, bring milk to a boil, then add two types of chocolate to it. The sauce must remain warm. Put scoops of ice cream in the middle of the plate, “surround” it with chocolate sauce and serve.
Michelin-starred chef Hélène Darroze runs restaurants in Paris, London and Moscow (see her website helenedarroze.com for more details). Every month, she shares her favorite recipes with us and talks about what has been a source of culinary inspiration for her.