Pumpkin and Coconut Soup

Name: Pumpkin and Coconut Soup
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Australia
Ingredients: 1 blade of lemon grass, bruised and roughly chopped; 2 red chilli peppers, seeded (optional); 750 ml (1¼ pints) coconut milk; 1 teaspoon caster sugar; 1 tablespoon fish sauce; 300 ml (10 fl oz) Gold water; freshly ground black pepper; salt; 450 g (1 lb) pumpkin, peeled and cut into 2.5 cm (1 pint) cubes; juice of ½ lemon; handful of fresh basil leaves, chopped; 1 large onion, roughly chopped; 100 g (4 oz) uncooked prawns, peeled with back vein removed for how to do this; ½ teaspoon shrimp paste – or use anchovy paste

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Floyd on Oz

By Keith Floyd

Published 1991

About

Those of you who used to make artichoke and watercress soup and things like that in the 1960s for your dinner parties will have no difficulty in creating this sophisticated, tangy little number.

Ingredients

450 g (1 lb) pumpkin, peeled and cut into 2.5 cm (1

Oceania
Australia
Dinner
Pescatarian
Soup
Gluten-free

Method

Sprinkle the pumpkin with the lemon juice and let it stand for 15–20 minutes. Put the prawns, onion, shrimp or anchovy paste, chillies, lemon grass and a couple of tablespoons of cold water into a food processor or blender and switch on for 15–20 seconds to make a smooth paste.

Skim off the thick coconut cream from the top of the coconut milk and save for later. Put the coconut milk and