Recipe: Best Pumpkin Soup

A recipe for All-Saints'-Day or any time your nose is blowed froze (tiddly pom). So so so so so so good -- it'll put roses in your cheeks.

1 small pumpkin, halved (or 1/2 large, quartered)
1 bulb garlic (really), whole peeled cloves
2 shallots, roughly diced
1.5 tbs brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp speculaas
(ground spice mixture from the Netherlands; equal parts ginger, clove, cinnamon, white pepper, and cardamom.)
1/3 c olive oil
8 c vegetable broth
2 regular cans coconut milk
2 red (Asian "bird") chillies
4 toasted lime leaves and/or 3 bruised stalks lemon grass
1 thumb sized hunk of ginger, surface peeled and scored
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 cup canned tomatoes

1. Put pumpkin cut-side up in a baking dish. Heap garlic and shallots inside pumpkin.

2. Mix brown sugar, salt, and spices, and sprinkle over the filled pumpkin. Drizzle liberally with olive oil and roast at 375-400 degrees for an hour.

3. Meanwhile, simmer broth, chillies, ginger, and lime leaves / lemon grass until the pumpkin is done roasting and has cooled enough to handle.

4. Remove solids from the broth. Scoop pumpkin flesh off the skin and into the broth, along with coconut milk, soy sauce, and tomatoes. Blend and warm to serve.

This is my adaptation from a recipe in the cookbook, "Scrambled Brains", by BC chef, Pierre LeBlanc, and comic-book artist, Robin Konstabaris, who does the "Teen Jesus" funnies in the WestEnder newspaper.

The book contains practical recipes and extensive comics about life in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Ours was autographed! Speculaas, says the book, was named after Saint Nicholas of Myra, who was the speculator of his church.