Ingredients:
One massive cauldron or other pot large enough to bathe a toddler
1: 30 lb whole pumpkin or ayote squash
10-12 pounds large whole/fresh carrots
1 fresh ginger root
3-4 medium yellow onions (or 2 Walla Walla Onions)
Spices: salt, pepper, cayenne, vinegar, liquid smoke
Makes: About 30 servings
Directions:
Step one: Use a machete (or comparably large and strong cutting
implement... perhaps a chainsaw or kitana) to cut the pumpkin into
large hand-sized pieces (no need to remove the shell). Do ditch the
seeds, stem and culo (ass hole) of the pumpkin.
Step 2: Nip off the tips (both ends) of your carrots, and cut into
large chunks (i.e. 1/2 or 1/3 pieces).
Step Pi: peel about 2 inches of ginger (with a potato peeler or paring
knife), and chop into roughly 1/2 inch chunks
Step D: Dump all your pumpkin, carrots and ginger* into a cauldron.
Fill the rest of the pot with water. *OPTION: instead of chucking
your ginger into the pot in large chunks, you could just grate a lot
of it in there, to taste. You could even to this later on, with the
rest of the seasoning.
Step Blue: Bring pot to boil (this may take a while) and reduce heat
to medium (to keep it from boiling over). Boil ingredients for
like... an hour at least, until the pumpkin meat and carrots are so
soft that they pretty much don't resist when you stab them with a
fork.
Step Blue and a half: While the cauldron is heating, dice up your
onions and saute them in olive oil until they're clarified or even
golden-browned.
Step Eleventy: when your pumpkin is ready, take the cauldron off the
stove, but do NOT drain the water. fish out a few of your large
chunks of pumpkin and set them on the counter to cool. Once they're
cool enough to touch, scoop the meat off the shell (should be a cinch
now).
Step Eleventy-one: blend the pot. basically, take a bit of pumpkin
meat, a bit of carrot, and some of the stew water, and blend that shit
up to creamy smoothness (or as close as you can get). This process
will also take a while, since you'll need to do several rounds. In
some of the rounds, include your grilled, diced onions and blend that
shit up too.
Step Lemur: recombine all your blended stuff back into your Uberpot,
and add any extra (hot) water you might want to thin the pot to your
liking.
Step Thailand: Season the soup using your own proprietary rationing
of spices as mentioned above. The Thai philosophy recommends some
balance of: salty (salt), sweet (could be the carrots already in
there, or you could add a little sugar), bitter (vinegar), spicy
(cayenne) and savory (salt + liquid smoke).
Tips:
Your mileage may vary, but that's about it!
FYI, I mis-stated the 5 Thai flavors by a bit. Here's a better explanation:
the five flavors are: Sweet, Sour, Salty, Spicy, Bitter
I guess savory/umame just comes along for the ride. I guess the liquid smoke could count as bitter, and I think the vinegar could count as sour. Doesn't need to be fancy vinegar. For this bit, we just hit a splash of regular white vinegar. For other things, like our re-fried black beans recipe, I prefer a good balsamic.
That recipe can come later, btw. I know what you're thinking, though. Re-fried beans? A recipe? WTF? Isn't the recipe just "Open Can, add heat"? Trust me; no. It's worth doing them up right. For better or for worse, people won't be able to stop eating them (especially with the home-made no-knead 5-minute bread we usually serve them with).
Cheers,
Alex
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