Pumpkin soup that actually tastes awesome!

I'm not a fan of pumpkin. I never made anything pumpkin-related myself, but whenever I ate it, it was just.. not that special for me. The Doctor likes it even less. So when I bought a pumpkin today, I did wonder whether I might have hit my head in my sleep.

A good friend of mine, Toni the Canadian, told me about her pumpkin soup yesterday. It sounded easy enough to make and I figured I'd give pumpkin another try. The Doctor wasn't too psyched about it, so I decided to add some ingredients that he likes in order to make it taste awesome for both of us.

The recipe Toni gave me was easy enough. Roast onions in some oil, add flour, chicken broth, pumpkin and milk. So I looked around the kitchen to see what else we had. There were potatoes, bacon, garlic and cheese. Good enough, I thought, and started to work on the pumpkin.

Now, I assume most people have made delicious things out of pumpkins. But getting the seeds and all the weird strings and finally the meaty part out of it took me an hour. And even after an hour, I only had about 200 gr of it. That had to be enough, my arms already hurt like crazy.

I skinned the potatoes, onions and the garlic and cut it all into small pieces. (I used so many plates for all the different ingredients that the kitchen now looks as if we had a huge party with dozens of guests) I followed the Canadian recipe, but added the garlic right away. I roasted it in margarine with the onions, added flour and then a liter of water. I let it boil, added veggie broth powder (I didn't have any chicken broth powder on hand and I thought the veggie broth might taste well with the cheese I had) and then pushed the six potatoes I still had into the pot.

After about 10 minutes of slow boiling, I added the pumpkin. Another 10 minutes passed before I added soft cheese with herbs (I'm not sure if that's sold everywhere in the world). I assume, if you don't have that, sour cream or normal soft cheese taste great as well.While I let that boil together to make sure it was all soft, I roasted bacon bits, scooped them out of the pan with a spoon so the oil and the droppings remained in the pan and then roasted the pumpkin seeds. I didn't want to throw them away after all.

Finally, I pulled the pot off the oven and puréed the potatoes, pumpkin and everything else in the pot until it was really creamy and there were no big bits left in it. I added a pinch of salt and some pepper. I wanted nutmeg in it, too, but found out that we had none of it left. If you wish to add that, I'm sure it would make it taste even better.

I poured a portion of the soup on a plate and garnished it with the roasted pumpkin seeds and bacon and voilá:

It doesn't have that really orange look because of all the potatoes in it, but you can still -taste- the pumpkin. And let me tell you something, it tastes delicious. I'm glad I made such a big pot of it because even the Doctor ate more than one plate. Even though it's just soup, we're both really full (it's all the cheese!). Even though it was a lot of work (mostly because it was my first time with a pumpkin, I assume. No pun intended), I'd make that soup again anytime and I'm adding it to my recipe book!

Here are the exact ingredients I used:
1 onion
5 cloves of garlic
margarine for roasting
1/4 cup flour
6 medium sized potatoes
200 gr pumpkin
100 gr soft cheese (herb version) or normal soft cheese or sour cream
salt
pepper
nutmeg
bacon bits (as much as you want as it doesn't got into the soup)
pumpkin seeds

I hope you have fun trying this recipe!