Soup 3 - aka the best soup ever (this week)

I'm not sure if it was the flavour of the pumpkin or some other factor that made this soup the best ever soup ever (this week). It wasn't the usual gargantuan halloween pumpkin that makes as good eating as it does a handbag, but a small orange pumpkin, about the size of a childs head. The recipe had been hanging around for a few weeks and has been adapted from one by Shona Crawford Poole in Country Living Magazine, November 2007. Despite the whole head of garlic, this recipe isn't dominated by any one ingredient and has a great balance of flavours.

Roasted pumpkin and garlic soup

1kg pumpkin, cut into chunks
olive oil
head of garlic
curry paste, 1tsp good stuff - I used a new coriander & cumin paste I found at The Asian Spice shop
1l stock - I used that Swiss bouillion stuff
small tub (250g?) creme fraiche

Toss the pumpkin chunks in the olive oil and place in a roasting pan. Slice the top of the head of garlic, drizzle with some olive oil and wrap it loosely in foil and stuff it in amongst the pumpkin. Put it all in a pre-heated oven at 180C and roast for 30 minutes until its lightly caramelized.

Blend the pumpkin with the pulp of the garlic squeezed out. Add the curry paste, enough of the stock to get the consistency you like and the creme fraiche and blend well. Return to a pan and heat.

An artificial barm

In breadmaking, there is a historic tradition that runs parallel to brewing of using a barm for fermenting dough. The baker took the foaming froth from the top of the brewing beer, rich in yeast and malt, and used this to start a bread dough on its path to becoming a loaf.

Nowadays, the act of brewing is far removed from every day life and getting hold of some barm is near impossible. Modern alternatives have been suggested, such as Dan Lepard's in "The Handmade Loaf" where a good ale is heated to around 70C before whisking in some flour. When cool, some leavening agent such as sourdough starter is added.

I was surprise to learn that preparation of an alternative barm has been around for a long time. On Google books (again) I found a mention of Artifical Barm in "Martin Doyle's Common things of every-day life" (1857) where chapter 5 is given over to all things bread.

Page 25 lists:

Recipe by Professor Donovan for making Artificial Barm

Boil some sound potatoes until they are perfectly soft and just beginning to break into meal; reduce them to a thin paste with boiling water, add of molasses an eighth of the weight of the potatoes, and about the same bulk as the molasses, of good yeast; all to be well mixed and placed before a fire, if in winter. The mixture soon begins to ferment: when the fermentation is at its height, this yeast is fit for use.

Whilst I might try this one day out of curiosity, I think I'll stick to Dan's version in general - if nothing else, there's usually some left over beer.