P. Allen Smith: When you think of cooking with pumpkins, start with the delicious pumpkin pie no doubt comes to mind. Well get ready to think of pumpkins in a new way. We visited the Viking Cooking School at Milestone Culinary Art Center in Dallas where Chef Sharon Van Meter created a savory pumpkin bisque.

Chef Sharon: We are going to do a pumpkin bisque today, and one of the ways we start is we do a bouquet garni which will infuse the flavors into the bisque. I like to do natural and we put in some sprigs of thyme, we have some sage, sage is great with pumpkin and some bay leaves and we tied it with the green union. Now, let us get started with the bisque.

We are going to take about two tablespoons of the butter. We want to melt this butter so that we can add in all the flavor ingredients. About two cloves of garlic and mince those so that the flavor distribute evenly, one small onion or medium if you really like onions and two leeks. Always remember to soak your leeks because they absorb a lot of dirt from the earth. The last thing we are going to add is the couple of stalks of celery. This need to sauté until they are translucent in about two or three minutes.

Next, we are going to add the pumpkin. If taken a couple of cups of pumpkin fresh pumpkin here and try to use pumpkin. If you’ve never cooked with it, it’s kind of fun. Pumpkins are incredibly or 90% water and so when they say drink a glass of water, this is it just have your pumpkin soup. We’re going to stir just a bit.

Next I will add in some chicken stock a couple of quarts. Well, what I like this soup is not a cream base soup. The pumpkin actually disintegrate to the point where they will taken itself and that makes it capable of not adding cream to it which we do in some other soups for a thickening agent. So we are going to left this for about probably 20 minutes, we are going to let it and we put our bouquet garni in there to finish the product and we are going simmer this for about 20 minutes until the pumpkin softens. It looks like we have got into the point where the pumpkin is soft and enough to puree.

Our next step would be pulling the bouquet garni remnants out. And if it’s come apart during the cooking process, don’t worry just use some tongs and get all of the little pieces of green out. I am going to use an emulsion blender on this and if you don’t have one of this, pick one up, they are great, great pieces of equipment. I think that is pretty good, I like mine just a little bit thicker the most. If you want it the smooth or consistency, I would put it in a commercial blender or a household blender. Do not be afraid to taste at this point because we are going to add some salt and pepper to taste and some sherry.

I like a little wine on salt I am not going to add as much as most would. A little bit of salt and I do use sea salt, I just find that it brings out the fullest flavor in food. We are going to stir. And to enhance this, we are going to use just a touch of sherry on it. Once again, that will bring out the autumn flavors in food.

Okay, I think that’s it. How perfect this is for a full dinner or an afternoon lunch.

P. Allen Smith: If you would like more information on this topic or any regarding topic, just check out my website pallensmith.com.