The Friday Soup, And the First Pumpkin

Friday is always Soup Day at my house.

This is one of the handful of routines I have been able to maintain over the years, since my older children were toddlers.

I can count on one hand the number of the routines I actually follow.

As a rule, I tend to have difficulty sticking to any given plan. I don’t know if I should blame aging, or undiagnosed ADHD – that thing was never mentioned when I was growing up, and tends to still be ignored in France, as far as I can see. Maybe it is a combination of the two, or a result of growing up in a family that rarely made explicit plans about anything, relying instead on the consistency of government jobs and the limitations imposed by modest economic circumstances.

Whatever the reason - and maybe there isn’t any, - making a schedule for anything, thinking ahead of time, and visualizing myself in the future, has always been challenging for me.

Out of necessity, as I kept adding children to my life - some planned, and one not, - I obviously needed to adjust and develop a minimal set of organizational skills. Otherwise, I would have long been swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle of domestic life and wouldn’t be here to tell the story.

But some areas of my life remain stubbornly resistant to any kind of structure and anticipation.

Picking a day for running and yoga is easy.

But scheduling writing times remains elusive - as you will notice immediately if you look at my sparse and quite random posting history since the winter of 2021. And I suspect that planning vacations, as well as selecting after-school activities for the kids, will always be torture and a fertile ground for procrastination.

Anyway, I am getting carried away once again and losing the thread – proving my point, I guess.

Suffice it to say that schedules and routines remain elusive in some areas of my life, but that I have a few that I stick to religiously.

And that includes the Friday soup.

Planning meals, in fact, is about the only form of planning that has remained consistent and reliable in my life since I became a mother. And it has become such a part of my Sunday routine that I don’t even think about it anymore. Everything else might be going to seed in my existence, and I went through periods when I couldn’t really tell night from day, especially when babies were around, or when Covid was this major family disruptor that we now seem to have all forgotten about.

And even in these simpler times, I might still not know where I will be living next year and if we are indeed going on vacation in two weeks.

But I always know what we are eating TONIGHT.

I have this reliable template of Fish on Monday is fish, Meat on Tuesday, Pasta on Wednesday, Salad on Thursday, and soup on Friday. On weekends I do not cook, and everybody needs to survive on leftovers, take-out, or sandwiches.

And my husband will usually make something simple on Sunday nights, unless we resort to the local, and excellent, Chinese take-out restaurant on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. More often than not, this simple thing will be his signature farfalle pasta with good Spanish tuna in a jar, olive oil, and Spanish “pimentón” aka smoked paprika – for those who might be wondering, that is it, that is the recipe.

And as much as the menu can change during the week based on everybody’s late afternoon activities or nights out, the Friday soup remains immutable. Even if my husband and I go out, the soup will be ready for whomever is around, and hungry.

There is something about this ritual that I find profoundly comforting. Friday is one of the only nights when all four children are home at a reasonable hour and we can all sit together for soup, followed by ice cream or any special dessert to mark the end of the school week.

Of course, not everybody likes all soups, and I must endure my share of lamentations and complaints – Mommy, NOT the vegetable soup with the chunks in it!!!

You know exactly what I’m talking about, and sometimes this is enough to make me want to drop my pot of boiling soup right there and then on the kitchen floor and grab my phone to order pizza, no matter how complex that operation has proven to be in Paris so far (don’t even get me started on the three different delivery guys showing up with two pizzas each at 30-minute intervals, buzzing on the intercom each time and telling me they cannot possibly walk up to the second floor and need to be met downstairs right with not a second to spare).

But I digress again.

The point is, there is one soup that never gets me any complaints, and that all my children have been requesting since they were able to talk.

And that is pumpkin soup, or “soupe à la citrouille”, which I religiously start making at the beginning of October every year, and which remains on our regular family rotation through the end of winter.

Let’s be honest, my fifteen-year-old son no longer tugs at my apron to make this request as soon as September rolls around. But his twelve-year-old sister did ask me this year, a few days after going back to school, when I would be making that soup. And since the end of August, her two younger brothers have been on an active mission to make October, and Halloween, come sooner this year, so we know exactly where they stand on that point.

This pumpkin soup is nothing fancy, and not something I would have ever imagined my children would cherish so much. I made it once nonchalantly out of the New York Times website after the picture of smiling Jacques Pépin caught my attention.

Nothing seemed more appealing, and more FRENCH, at a time when I probably needed it. I did wonder if my kids would be able to taste the hidden turnip in there, or if the white wine would be too strong for them.

Fear not, they enjoyed the sweetness of the wine and never mentioned anything other than the “citrouille”. Which, in New York, was generally store-bought and pre-cubed butternut squash from Fairway or Citarella.

But despite my best efforts I haven’t been able to find an equivalent here in Paris, and have found myself, as a result, painstakingly cutting and cubing “potimarrons” from the farmer’s market.

I had never seen those in the U.S., and this is all I can see here in France, even though this pumpkin variety seems to grow everywhere except Europe. Like smaller, rounder, and darker little pumpkins with a cute, beige little stem on top – a Red Kuri squash maybe, according to this lovely chart.

I can already hear some of you saying that I am not in my right mind for complaining about these beauties. And that of course, fresh pumpkin from the farmers’ market will always be superior to pre-packaged butternut from a random grocery chain.

And these people will be right.

They will be good, morally superior people with a more refined palate than I have. But I am sorry to admit, no matter how much I love the taste of potimarron once it is cut up and cooked, I still find it a pain to prepare, and my sighs can be heard from the other end of the apartment when I set out to cut one with my big kitchen knife.

I do NOT enjoy working with pumpkins or any type of Winter squash, and just never have. Pumpkin carving was always my husband’s job in New York, and I now remember exactly why. However, once it is ready, I do admit that potimarron adds a deliciously sweet and nutty flavor that butternut didn’t have, and I recommend it wholeheartedly if you can get your hands on it.

So here it is, your old-fashioned Halloween soup, courtesy of Jacques Pépin.

I am smiling just writing that name. I mean, how much quainter could you do, as a French chef’s name?

Mr. Pépin was obviously destined to become a domestic icon of French cooking in the United States.

And of course, he served his pumpkin soup off a pumpkin shell, because you would expect him to be doing just that.

Naturally, you can do the same if you have gone all out with the October spirit, or fancy yourself an Instagram Fall decor domestic goddess.

Personally, I have never done it, and the soup still does its fine October job.

The only rule here is to use fresh pumpkin or butternut, and the best possible chicken broth you can, if you are using broth. Acceptable white wine is also a plus, as I find Roland’s white cooking wine and its close cousins do not quite make the cut, and will impart a slightly tangy, bitter taste to the end result.

But whatever you work with, you will end up with a rich, velvety soup with a perfect orange color that will be the best thing you could ever hope for on a chilly October night.

Classic Pumpkin Soup

By Jacques Pépin, The New York Times.

Ingredients

For 6 to 8 servings – about 2 quarts/slightly under 2 liters

• 1 pumpkin, 8 to 10 inches/20-25 cm in diameter

• 8 tablespoons /1 stick/100 grams unsalted butter

• 1 medium onion, sliced

• ⅔ cups / 65 cl dry white wine

• 2 small white turnips, peeled and sliced

• 1 large carrot, peeled and sliced

• 1 large potato, peeled and sliced

• 5 cups/about 1 liter chicken stock (or water), or as needed

• 1 10-inch French-style baguette or 2 small rolls, crusts removed, thinly sliced

• ½ cup/100 ml heavy cream/ « crème liquide »

• Salt and ground white pepper
  

Preparation

1. If you wish to use a pumpkin as a bowl - which, remember, you don't have to: Cut off top of pumpkin at least 5 inches across, so that it can serve as a lid. Scoop out and discard all seeds and stringy material. Using a large sturdy spoon, scrape out 6 cups of pumpkin meat, taking care not to break through the shell. Set aside the pumpkin and its lid in a warm place.

2. Bread toasts: Note: I skip this step and we just eat the soup with a chunk of regular bread. In a large soup pot over medium-low heat, melt 2 tablespoons/20 g butter. Add onion and sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Add wine and simmer for 1 minute. Add turnips, carrot, potato, pumpkin meat and enough chicken stock or water to barely cover.

3. Cover and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, heat remaining 6 tablespoons butter, and add bread slices, turning until lightly browned on both sides. Set aside half for garnish, and when soup has come to a boil, add remaining half to the soup.

4. Gently simmer soup for 1 hour, stirring once or twice. The soup will be very thick.

5. Add cream, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Using an immersion blender, purée the hot soup in the pot until very smooth.

6. Pour hot soup into pumpkin, or into bowls. Serve from pumpkin, garnishing each serving with one or two reserved toasts.