Pumpkin Soup

Usually, pumpkin means pie, a limited role for a large vegetable that is nearly ubiquitous from Labor Day through Christmas. But soup based on pumpkin—or other winter squash like acorn or butternut—is a minimalist’s dream, a luxuriously creamy dish that requires little more than a stove and a blender. If there is a challenge here, it lies in peeling the squash. The big mistake many people make is to attack it with a standard vegetable peeler; the usual result is an unpeeled pumpkin and a broken peeler. A quicker and more reliable method is to cut the squash up into wedges; then rest each section on a cutting board and use a sharp, heavy knife to cut away the peel. You’ll wind up taking part of the flesh with it, but given the large size and small cost of winter squash, this is hardly a concern.