Roasted Kabocha Soup with Fried Kabocha

Suspiciously but subtly, there was always a little bit of miso soup left on the bottom of my soup bowl around this time of the year. I ate every tiny piece of negi and wakame, which I really liked. Tofu, age, and daikon were also my favorite. But for some strange reason, the slices of kabocha magically disappeared in the bottom on my dark, cloudy, Hatcho miso soup.

I didn’t like them.

They were my morning enemy. If I had a bite of that kabocha slice in my mom’s miso soup, morning became another word for grumpy. Brushing teeth and washing mouth weren’t good enough to cleanse the stubborn kabocha-in-miso-soup palate. I chewed a piece of gum on my way to school and tried to forget about it.

It was the combination of texture and taste in the soup that didn’t agree with my teenage taste-buds. Imagine silky smooth tofu swimming with wakame, squishy and juicy age, tender strips of daikon and crunchy pieces of negi in umami-boosted Hatcho miso soup. Then suddenly, slices of kabocha randomly show up, clouding the whole texture of the soup, and getting its juice into every one of the other ingredients. Just that one ingredient ruining a delicious soup was unbelievable to me, yet rest of my family seemed to enjoy it.

Still, to this date, I prefer not to have kabocha in my miso soup. Sorry, mom. But I wanted to be fair to kabocha because I don’t hate it (at least, not anymore). I love it when it’s cooked with Adzuki beans or fried in tempura. But I had yet to encounter a kabocha soup that I really liked. So there I was, challenging myself to make a delicious kabocha soup that I could call it my own and my favorite.

Because it was a challenge, I avoided going for the creamy route. It is dairy free as long as you don’t use butter when making oignon brûlé. No, this isn’t misspelled. It’s a French cooking term for a halved, unpeeled and burnt onion. It’s used in making sauces and stock for adding color and flavor. The base of the soup is vegetable consommé, which uses egg whites, so it’s not vegan but the rest of the ingredients are 100% plant base.

The soup disappeared quickly but not because the bowl was leaking. I didn’t hide anything anywhere. It was genuinely a good soup. After finishing a big bowl I had in the kabocha bowl, I went back for more. With a slice of sweet batard in one hand, spoon on the other, I ate the rest of the soup and enjoyed watching red and yellow leaves falling from trees outside the window. Next thing I noticed, I could see the natural orange bottom of the bowl.

Recipe of the Day - Roasted Kobocha Soup with Fried Kabocha

Ingredients (serves 4-5 big bowls):
2 large (approx. 3 lbs) kabocha (These are for cooking only. If you are serving in kabocha bowls, you will need extra for those.)
½ oignon brûlé
½ onion, thinly sliced
5 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
1 leek (white part), chopped
6oz tomato puree
4 large egg whites, lightly beaten
1 Sachet d’Epices (thyme, parsley, and bay leaf)
1 gallon water
salt and pepper to taste
sprigs of thyme for garnishing

Preheat the oven to 375F. Line baking sheets with parchment papers. Cut kabocha into half, deseed, and cut into chunks. Leave a little bit for making fried kabocha, which needs to be cut into very thin strips. Once you make those thin strips, set them aside. Put the cut side down and spread on the prepared baking sheets. Sprinkle some salt over kabocha and bake for about 45-50 minutes or until they are cooked and tender.

While baking kabocha, make oignon brûlé and prepare for the vegetable consommé. In a large pot, combine all ingredients except salt and pepper. Heat the pot over low to medium and bring it to simmer slowly. Stir almost constantly until the raft (clarification mixture starts to adhere into a solid mass) is formed. Continue to simmer for about an hour, uncovered.

Fry kabocha strips in vegetable oil until golden brown and crispy. Set them aside.
Strain the consommé through a cheesecloth or paper-filter-lined strainer. The liquid should be perfectly clear at this point.

When kabocha are done, remove them from the oven and let them cool at room temperature. Once they are cool to touch, cut the skin off and put them in a food processor (depending on the size of your food processor, you might have to divide into multiple batches). Pour about ½ c of consommé into the food processor. Puree kabocha until the mixture is smooth and consistent.

Slowly mix in pureed kabocha into consommé using a whisk. Put the consommé-kabocha mixture into a large pot and warm it up over low to medium heat. At this time, adjust the taste with salt and pepper.

Serve warm with fried kabocha strips and a sprig of thyme.