A Month of Soups: Pumpkin with Black Truffle Oil

Pumpkin soup! How much more American can you get? Well, that is until you internationalize it with French truffle oil and tropical spices and coconut. Still you got the American peanuts in here. Here's a pumpkin soup with enough elegance to dress it up for company.

This is a special soup to go with your fancy dinner plans. I suggest a small cup of the soup as an appetizer. Serve shrimp kabobs, quinoa, and fruit salad for the entrée, and something lovely and chocolate for dessert.

Warning! Warning! Be sure to get the real-deal truffle oil instead of one of those cheap knock-offs. The harshness of the cheap stuff will ruin your food. If you can’t afford truffle oil (for this special dinner soup), some alternatives are provided below the recipe.

Also, this soup is a little sweet (for V-Day). If you don’t want that, use regular pumpkin, or make your own by roasting a pumpkin and scraping out the insides so you can puree it.

Pumpkin Soup with Black Truffle Oil (serves 2-3)

¼ c onion, finely diced

1 t butter

2 c vegetable broth, divided

1 small can pumpkin pie mix

2 T chunky peanut butter

1 t curry powder

1 t black truffle oil

2 T toasted coconut

6 salted peanuts

In a medium pan, sauté onions with butter until translucent. Use your mini food processor to puree the onions with ½ c broth. Put the remaining broth into the cooking pan where the onions were. Add the pumpkin, onion mixture, peanut butter, and curry powder. Whisk together over low-medium heat. Turn off the heat and let sit until cool. Re-warm to serve.

Lightly, lightly, lightly drizzle the pumpkin soup with black truffle oil. Garnish with toasted coconut and three salted peanuts.

If you don’t have truffle oil, thin 1 teaspoon sour cream with drips of milk until it is pourable. Put a dab of honey in and stir. Drizzle over the soup and sprinkle with toasted coconut and peanuts.

DH’s Rating: 2 Tongues Up. It was better than that! Oh, well. He said he didn’t like a pumpkin soup with curry and peanut butter. Or any pumpkin soup for that matter!