Halloween pumpkin and coconut soup with ginger and lime

Halloween of course always means copious amounts of left-over pumpkin/squash and I'm sure you all have your own favourite soup recipe - but I can tell you with THE UTMOST CONFIDENCE that this is the BEST EVER: easy, quick - and so DELICIOUS:

2 tbsp vegetable oil

750g pumpkin or squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into chunks
A bunch of spring onions, chopped
A fat thumb of ginger, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 lemon grass stalks, crushed/cut up
1.2 l vegetable or chicken stock
1 x 400ml tin coconut milk
2-3tbsp Thai fish sauce
the juice of ½ -1 lime
A large bunch of coriander, stalks and leaves separated, finely chopped

Heat the oil in a pan and, over a low heat, sweat the pumpkin, spring onions, ginger, garlic, lemon grass and coriander stalks for a few minutes. Add the stock and simmer, covered, for 20-25 minutes. Liquidise and then add the coconut milk, fish sauce and lime juice and reheat for a few minutes. Serve garnished with some of the coriander leaves.

Serves 6

Notes:
I always freeze any left-over lemon grass stalks - they just go a tiny bit soft when defrosted, but that makes them so much easier to chop! And if you don' like "bits" of lemon grass in the soup, just bash the stems with a meat cleaver/rolling pin before and fish them out once the soup is done.

If you can't find/don't have any lemon grass, you can use the zest of the lime instead.

This soup works equally well with carrots instead of pumpkin or squash.

For Halloween this year my almost 11 year old daughter (who is the most talented photographer ever) and I whole-heartedly support World Vision's ""Night of Hope" - trying to show girls all over the globe who are living in abject horror and fear that we care:

Photo by Mila

Please do the same. Thank you.