warm soup for the cold winter

pumpkin and sweet potato soup

folks who know me understand that if possible, i will include some kashmiri chili powder and/or some tahini, so here is my recipe:
Ingredients:
500 gram pumpkin, peeled
1 sweet potato, peeled
3 small onions
4 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp kashmiri chili powder, or preferably more
1/2 dry red chili
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp black pepper
3/4 liter water
1 heaping tsp salt
1 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
2-3 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp pumpkin seeds, dry roasted
few sprigs of parsley
1 tsp pumpkin seed oil

Chop the pumpkin and sweet potato into chunks, chop the onions, garlic and parsley.

heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, then add the thyme, red chili and kashmiri chili powder, cumin powder, and black pepper. if you don't have kashmiri chili powder then paprika might do the trick visually but you will never know what you are missing out on.
add the garlic and onion and stir occasionally until the onion becomes translucent.

Stir in the pumpkin and sweet potato.
after 2 minutes add water and salt. cover and cook until pumpkin and sweet potato are soft.

add the lemon zest and grated nutmeg and blend smooth, preferably with an immersion blender.

stir in 2 tbsp tahini and taste to see if you would like a little more tahini and/or salt and pepper

as we used to say after learning a few words of french: the soup's on
garnish according to who you are and with whom you are sharing this wonderful soup
here I used pumpkin seeds. pumpkin seed oil and parsley leaves.

dry roast the pumpkin seed in an iron skillet until they start to pop. stir regularly to avoid burning

if the eaters are really hungry coming in from working or playing in the cold or just for more crunch and a masculine look, quickly and liberally toss on the parsley and seeds and lightly drip the oil.

if you want a more refined, delicate look, prewarm the bowls. that will give you a minute to arrange the seeds more sparingly. chop the parsley finer. i used an oil dropper for the oil. but don't take so long time that the soup starts getting cold, definitely do not do that.

enjoy