Drinks advice

Roasted pumpkin soup with Osborne Sherry Medium

The bowl holds a pumpkin soup that was first roasted for half an hour at 200 degrees together with shallot, garlic and ginger, then bound with stock. The medium sherry sets an amber-coloured wine against it that meets the sweetness of the roasted pumpkin on equal terms.

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Roasted pumpkin soup
Photo: stu_spivack, CC BY-SA 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Osborne has its sherry bodegas in El Puerto de Santa Maria. This bottle is a medium, and according to the Consejo Regulador that is not a separate ageing style but a blend: a vino generoso is mixed with naturally sweet wine or with concentrated must, after which the wine contains between 5 and 115 grams of residual sugar per litre at 15 to 22 percent alcohol. Our own bottle page describes this bottle as amber-coloured with nutty notes, aged for an average of four years in the solera system. It is at 15 percent alcohol and comes in 75 centilitres.

Osborne Sherry Medium

The combination

Why this works together

Pumpkin roasted in the oven is not the same vegetable as pumpkin boiled in stock: the water evaporates, the natural sugars concentrate and caramelise, and what remains is sweet with a roasted edge. A bone-dry wine makes that sweetness look unbalanced. The few dozen grams of residual sugar in a medium keep pace with it, without the soup becoming a dessert. On top of that, the blend has an oxidative part, with the nutty notes our bottle page mentions; that layer suits the roasted side of the pumpkin and the cumin. The third argument is the ginger: it brings a warm sharpness, and residual sweetness takes the edge off it, just as it does with curry. The Consejo Regulador explicitly names soups and stews with medium.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 1 hour
  • Type starter

What you need

  • 1 kg pumpkin, peeled and cut into chunks
  • 4 shallots, halved
  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • a piece of fresh ginger of about 20 g
  • 2 litres vegetable stock
  • 60 ml extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 pinch of ground cumin
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

How to make it

  1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Peel the pumpkin, remove the seeds and fibres and cut the flesh into chunks.
  2. Halve the shallots and peel the garlic and the ginger.
  3. Spread the pumpkin, shallot, garlic and ginger over a baking tray, toss them with the olive oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper and cumin.
  4. Roast everything for about thirty minutes, until the pumpkin is soft and coloured at the edges.
  5. Meanwhile, heat up the stock.
  6. Purée the roasted vegetables with the hand blender, add the stock and let the soup simmer gently for about twenty more minutes.
  7. Purée everything once more until the soup is completely smooth and bring it to thickness with extra stock or water. Check the salt.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this medium at 12 to 14 degrees in a white wine glass, filled by about a third. With a hot soup that temperature is also practical: an ice-cold wine beside a hot cup tastes only cold. An opened medium keeps well for a long time; the Consejo counts on about two months for blended and oxidatively aged sherry with the bottle closed and stored cool.

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