Pumpkin Soup

Fall is a reliably nice time of year in these parts. Not every day, of course, but on the whole the season is very pleasant. More often than not, days are t-shirt warm and the air so clear that the Pyrenees seem close enough to touch. Newly plowed fields are a deep chocolate brown, turning to tan as the soil dries. Wooded hillsides are a mix of evergreen and changing leaves. In the vegetable garden,
late tomatoes can still be found on the vines, and the potirons have turned a wonderous pale shade of cinnamon. Evenings are cool enough for a fire and a bowl of hot soup. Pumpkin soup. That's exactly what we had this evening and it could hardly have been easier.

In past years we've grown pumpkins for the kids to carve at Halloween, and this year we planted not only traditional orange pumpkins but also a variety of pumpkin known in France as a potiron. As compared to a traditional Halloween pumpkin, a potiron has a more deeply ridged surface, a tan or pale-cinnamon colored skin, and vivid orange flesh.

Inspired by an excellent pumpkin soup served to us last week by some friends who had invited us to supper, we decided to try it ourselves. We looked at several recipes online but they all seemed to be much more complicated than the simple instructions our friends had given us. Granted, our French is far from perfect, but we were pretty sure the preparation they described were very straightforward. It was, and the results were simply delicious.

1. Walk to garden, pick one potiron.

If you don't happen to have any growing in the garden, they're widely available at markets. Wash the outside, and then cut it in half. Remove the seeds and scrape the stringers off the flesh with a spoon.

2. Cook to soften the flesh.

There are three options here: steaming, baking, and microwaving. We steamed half of our potiron, actually just put in a pot with a few cups of chicken broth and let it simmer. Next time we'll try baking it, face down on a greased cookie sheet. The idea is simply to get the flesh soft so you can scrape it off the skin. Forty-five minutes or so should do it. You may have to cut the halves into quarters or further to fit them into your cooking pot.

3. Set aside to cool; when cool, scoop the flesh off the skin with a large spoon and put it into a soup pot.

The only reason to let the cooked pumpkin pieces cool is so as not to burn your fingers.

4. Blend the cooked flesh with a potato masher or electric mixer

5. Stir in a cup or two of chicken stock, depending upon how much pumpkin you have -- just enough to make a thick but still pourable mixture -- and a tablespoon or so of melted butter (if the pumpkin is still warm, just stirring in a chunk of butter will do).

A hand masher or electric mixer in step 4 gives the soup a granular, country-style consistency. For a smoother, more refined consistency, at this point puree the mixture in a blender.

Serve hot with a dollop of creme fraiche or sour cream in the middle, lightly sprinkled with fresh chives and some hot bread fresh from the village boulangerie. Aside from the time required for cooking the pumpkin, total preparation time is 10 or 15 minutes.

Enjoy, and then after supper retire to a chair by the fire. ... read more ...

Le Tour de L'âne (The Donkey Tour)

In the midst of the summer tourist crush, an easily overlooked aspect of the old cité in Carcassonne is that people actually still live there. Today, of course, they have electricity, running water and central heating, not to mention satellite TV and high speed Internet. Yet, medieval traditions survive.

Le Tour de L'âne dates from the middle ages, and was originally held on the 28th of July as part of the feast of Saint Nazaire, one of the patron saints of the city. Currently it is held in October, this year on Sunday the 5th.

Traditionally, the most recently married male resident of the city was dressed in black and adorned with a horned cap from which vegetables were hung, then paraded around the town on the back of a donkey while the kids danced circles around him singing and old song that went "You've been cuckolded, poor man . . . ," while the women of the village kissed and pledged fealty to the horns. Supposedly this was to drive evil spirits away, but then as now it seems really to have been just a warmup for a dance and supper at the Narbonne Gate of the city that evening.

Although the celebration is said to be tamer now than in days gone by, the residents are determined to see it survive. This year there had been no marriages among the residents of the old city, so the most recently retired man rode the donkey instead, in full traditional regalia and to the great amusement of the tourists who were lucky enough to happen upon the event. Any evil spirits remaining at the end of the day were rapidly quaffed by the celebrants.

Much of the information in this post is excerpted from from http://mescladis.free.fr/tour-ane.htm, which has a bit more detail for those who can read French. A link to the newspaper account of this year's tour will be posted here when available.

Speaking of donkeys, one evening this summer we came round a bend in a little country road near home -- fortunately at a leisurely pace, because on one side was a steep dropoff into a cornfield and on the other side an even steeper dropoff into a canal -- to find ourselves behind a donkey carrying all the gear for two cross-country hikers who were a short ways ahead. It was obviously a donkey with a sense of humor because mounted on its rear was a regulation French license plate no. 642 ANE 23. The hikers were dressed in standard hiker gear, so it must also have been a donkey with considerable powers, because when we got home we could find no evil spirits in the house for our aperitif. ... read more ...