Recipes

This is the simplest-ever pumpkin soup where the pure, sweet taste of pumpkin is married with the slightly sharp one of yogurt. The large orange-fleshed pumpkins are winter vegetables, but you can find them throughout the year in Asian and Middle Eastern stores, sold by the slice, with their seeds and fibers removed, and wrapped in plastic wrap.

2 ½ pounds pumpkin
4 ½ cups chicken stock (or use 2 bouillon cubes)
1 to 2 teaspoons sugar
salt and black pepper

to serve:
1 cup plain whole-milk or strained Greek-style yogurt, at room temperature

Remove the peel and any seeds and fiber from the pumpkin and cut the flesh into pieces.

The peel is extremely hard and you have to cut it away by laying the slices or chunks flat on a board, cut side down, and then pressing down with a large heavy knife to cut the skin off.

Put the pieces in a large pan with only about 1 ½ cups stock (it will not cover the pieces), and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, or until the pumpkin is tender.

Blend to a purée in the food processor, or mash it with a potato masher, and return to the pan. Add the remaining stock, the sugar, and a little salt and pepper, and cook for a few minutes more, adding water to thin the soup, if necessary.

Serve the soup hot, and pass around the yogurt in a bowl for people to help themselves.

Excerpted from Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon
Copyright © 2006 by Claudia Roden. All rights reserved.