Читать книгу The Kitchen Diaries - Nigel Slater - Страница 74

a medium onion

garlic – 2 plump cloves

butter – 50g

pumpkin – 900g

coriander seeds – 1 tablespoon

cumin seeds – 2 teaspoons

small dried chillies – 2

chicken or vegetable stock – 1 litre

smoked bacon – 4 rashers

single cream – 100ml

Peel and roughly chop the onion. Peel and slice the garlic. Melt the butter in a large, heavy-based saucepan and cook the onion and garlic until soft and translucent. Meanwhile, peel the pumpkin, remove the stringy bits and seeds and discard them with the peel. You will probably have about 650g of orangey-yellow flesh. Chop into rough cubes and add to the onion. Cook until the pumpkin is golden brown at the edges.

Toast the coriander and cumin seeds in a small pan over a low heat for about two minutes, until they start to smell warm and nutty. Keep the pan to one side for later. Grind the roasted spices in a coffee mill or with a pestle and mortar. Add them and the crumbled chillies to the onion and pumpkin. Cook for a minute or so, then add the stock. Leave to simmer for twenty minutes or until the pumpkin is tender.

Fry the bacon in the pan in which you toasted the spices. It should be crisp. Cool a little, then cut up into small pieces with scissors. Whiz the soup in a blender or food processor till smooth. Pour in the cream and taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as necessary. Return to the pan, bring almost to the boil and then serve, piping hot, with the bacon bits scattered on top.

Enough to serve 4 generously

I also make a salad dressing tonight with 4 tablespoons of sake, 100g miso paste, 2 tablespoons of groundnut oil and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. I use it to dress a salad made from the following raw crunchy things: a couple of big handfuls of bean shoots, a handful of mint leaves and another of coriander, half a cucumber and a couple of carrots, shredded into matchsticks, four shredded spring onions and three red chillies, seeded and chopped. I toast 150g peanuts till they smell warm and nutty, chop them roughly, then toss the nuts, salad and miso dressing together. It makes a great, scrunchy, nutty, knubbly salad for two of us.