Filed under: cooking, family activities, Recipes | Tags: botanical garden, botanical gardens, family activities, gardening, New York, plants, public garden, public gardens, pumpkins, vegetables
Patty, QBG’s Deputy Director, has been making everyone on staff very hungry as she describes the large batches of incredible soup simmering away for her family’s Thanksgiving Dinner this year. So we pried the recipe out of her (!) and are happy to share it with our readers – along with her modifications to the original recipe.
Pumpkin Lentil Soup
Lynn, QBG’s receptionist and plant hotline guru, passed along this recipe a few years ago. We’re not positive of its origins – a fundraiser cookbook is the recollection – but we’ve both added our own flourishes and the soup has since become a Thanksgiving tradition.
Basic Ingredients:
2 large onions, chopped
¼ cup butter or margarine
5 cups chicken broth
1-1 ½ cups cooked and mashed or canned pumpkin
½ cup lentils, washed and picked over
¼ tsp. ground pepper
1/8 tsp. each marjoram and thyme
Dash hot-pepper sauce
1 cup light cream
½ cup toasted sliced almonds
Directions:
In a large Dutch oven-type pot, sauté onions in butter until golden. This is the real secret to a tasty soup, so caramelize those onions!
Add broth, pumpkin, lentils, pepper, herbs, and hot pepper sauce.
Cover and simmer about 1 ¼ to 1 ½ hours or until lentils are tender. Cool slightly.
Puree – an immersion blender is perfect or use a food processor. Add the cream and salt. For thinner soup, add more broth or cream.
Reheat and serve with the almonds.
My first batch was for Thanksgiving 2009. I substituted cayenne pepper for the hot pepper sauce, and added more ground pepper while layering salt over several stages. Modified the herbs a bit too, by using a pinch of sage plus Herbs de Provence (rosemary, marjoram, thyme and savory) rather than just marjoram and thyme.
The soup was such a hit that I made another batch for QBG’s holiday party the same year. To accommodate some of the vegetarians on staff (and satisfy my culinary curiosity!), I used vegetable stock. Tasty still, but I do prefer using the suggested chicken stock.
Just prepared soup for this year’s Thanksgiving Dinner and couldn’t resist a new modification! To give a bit of a Latin flavor, I added two envelopes of Sazon. Yum –can hardly wait to serve it to the family tomorrow!
Lynn’s modifications show just how flexible and creative this recipe can be. She prefers to simply let the pumpkin flavors come through stronger, and likes to lighten up the calories in this heavy-duty eating season. She leaves out the almonds, salt and light cream, adding just a touch at the end — and only if necessary. Since hot pepper sauce might not be to everyone’s liking, she eliminates it completely which lets more pumpkin and lentil come through.
Enjoy, and from all of us at Queens Botanical Garden, Happy Thanksgiving!
Fall greetings garden lovers!
Here’s a great recipe from Mary, a beloved member of the QBG family, packed with delicious apples.
So swing by the Farmers Market located at QBG, Fridays from 8:30am to 4pm, and grab some gorgeous apples to try this scrumptious treat at home!
Recipe: Apple Walnut Supreme Cake
What you’ll need
½ cup chopped walnuts
4 cups coarsely chopped apples
1 ¾ cups sugar
2 eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups sifted flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
What to do
-Combine apples and sugar. Set aside for 45 minutes until apples are nice and juicy.
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
-Add nuts to the apples.
-Mix flour and baking soda.
-In a large bowl mix eggs, oil, vanilla, cinnamon and beat for 1 minute.
-Add the other ingredients to the egg mixture, alternating between the apple mixture and the flour mixture, stirring well.
-Spoon the cake mixture into a baking pan 13” x 9” x 2”.
-Bake for 40- 45 minutes
