It's called a courge in French, this giant, orange-fleshed squash. A potiron, or pumpkin, is the same thing, but courge is what they call it here in Provence, at the Mas des Gres outside the town of l'Isle sur la Sorgue, a farmhouse B&B owned by Thierry Crovaro and his wife, Nina.
Thierry, now 50, has been teaching cooking classes to his guests since he bought the place 15 years ago. He trained as a chef at the hotel school in Lausanne, Switzerland, and spent the first half of his career in managing kitchens and hotels. Today he's going to show a group of eight or nine tour operators how to make soupe de courge, pumpkin soup. Turns out, it's not complicated at all.
Chop some aromatic vegetales (celery root, carrots and onions); put them into a stockpot with a stick of butter and sweat them over low heat to soften. Meanwhile, peel, seed and chop a small pumpkin (or buy pre-sliced wedges at the market). Add the pumpkin chunks to the stock pot, moisten with a couple of liters of water or stock, and cook until the pumpkin is soft, about 30 minutes. Purée the soup in a blender (in batches) and return it to the stockpot. Add milk or cream, salt, pepper and nutmeg; when the flavors and consistency are to your liking, stir in a big handful of chopped parseley and you're done. If you're just serving four or five people, you can even serve the soup out of a pumpkin.
There were almosst 50 of us on the bus, visiting a series of hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions--obscure as well as famous--around Provence. This time of year, right after the first frost, pumpkins are sold in every village market; you get pumpkin soup twice a day...with croutons, with cheese, with crème fraîche. Provence in summer is all greens, but now, as the lavender fades to grey and the vineyards turn yellow, it's always a reassuring orange color, full of nutritients, tasting like the good earth.
Cornichon's trip to France was sponsored by PACA, the Regional Tourism Committee for Provence.
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