Pumpkin and Spinach Soup

Pumpkin & Spinach Soup

What does one do when, on a ridiculous impulse, one buys an entire pumpkin?  Perhaps the title of this blog has given the answer away...  one makes soup!  For soup cooking in our house we use this wonderful contraption  called a multi-cooker.  It can also pressure cook, slow cook, brown, keep warm, and cook rice.  But we never cook rice with it.  We have another contraption for that.  If you don't have a multi-cooker and you were thinking about getting either a pressure cooker or a slow cooker, get this instead.  It's brilliant.  There are few different brands out there.  We chose the cheapest one we could find online and it's been great.  But now, on with the show...

Serves...
3-4 people as a main or 6-8 people as a entree.  Just add more of everything if you need to feed more people.

Ingredients
500g preferred pumpkin
Big ol' bunch of spinach or baby spinach (those leaves you were going to use for a salad but haven't really felt like a salad and now they're going to go off if you don't use them)
Heaped teaspoon of minced garlic (or to taste)
2 medium onions
Knob of butter/equivalent
11/2-2 cups of stock of choice (I used chicken, it's what I had)
S&P to taste

Step by step

One... Do your chopping... pumpkin into small cubes (good luck, hate chopping pumpkin), spinach into strips (set aside these two into same bowl), onion* diced (leave on chopping board, your done chopping now).

*TIP - I always cry when chopping onions unless I rinse them well under cold water while peeling... in other words, chop off both ends, chop in half, run under cold water while peeling back outer layer.  Magic.

Two... Melt butter in saucepan (or on browning setting on your fantastic multi-cooker) and "saute" the onions with the minced garlic.

Three... Chuck in the pumpkin and spinach and move around a bit for a minute or two.  Add some salt and pepper to your normal taste, you can add more later if need be.

Four... Add your stock.  Ideally the stock should almost but NOT cover all your veggies (for me anyway, but adjust to your own desired thickness).  Stir a little.

Cook.. Put on to boil (low heat), lid on for 25 minutes.  If you have a fantastic multi-cooker, use your "soup" setting, 25 minutes, airproof.

Blitz... Use a hand-held wizz-stick thing to pulverise your soup.  And your done.  If you've got a fantastic multi-cooker you can just leave it on the keep-warm setting while you go about your day.  Serve with lightly toasted low GI bread, sprinkle of parmesan, some crispy lean bacon and perhaps a dob of light sour cream? Delish.