Foodvice is a state of mind, it has to do with a constant curiosity about good food and a deep respect for the people who produce it and transform it

Why is this the first recipe I thought about? I discovered pumpkin, in the sense that I actually cooked extensively with it, only in 1993, during an Erasmus exchange in Amsterdam. In my native Italy pumpkin was rarely seen at our table. My mum made a very nice pumpkin risotto but my father and brother found the sweet side of pumpkin disagreeable and there was always a lot of arguing when mum dished out the orange stuff…

But every Saturday morning, only a stone’s throw from my domicile on Prinsengracht, a small and cheerful market featured prominently heaps of pumpkins and it did not take long for me to be seduced and to work out the local recipe for pumpkin soup: onion, garlic, pumpkin and at the end, lots of fresh leaves of watercress. It was a simple recipe and it tasted best like that. Except that time passed and my perception of what small variations could do to a soup changed completely. Flavor may come across as simple but that does not rule out a complex and subtle balance of different accents.

I have not been back to the cheerful Amsterdam market until May 2010. It was a Saturday and the place was buzzing with activity. This time I was not looking for pumpkins but had a meeting with the person who was to become the co-producer of my film. Tucked away behind a window covered with film posters, Pieter Van Huystee was waiting to hear about the strange project of a musical film on Brussels. There I was, back to a spot I knew well and loved well, with a heritage on my back that I would have never suspected as a philosophy student on an Erasmus exchange.

On May 2011, I was back again in Amsterdam, once again on a Saturday but this time round, the full team was there (producer Maarten Schmidt and DOP Klaas Boelen). We brought Pieter some images to watch and he really enjoyed them. Now we are preparing to go into production proper, so I think that a re-mastered version of pumpkin soup is the fit dish for the occasion.

I have learned a few things about this specific dish in the last two months. First of all I will cook it in a cast iron pot because I turn the fire off at one point and the soup will keep on cooking slowly without “exhausting” the flavor of vegetables. Then I ameliorated the “base”, namely the things you fry together before adding the pumpkin. I use half a big onion, a big clove of garlic, a chunk of sliced ginger and a chunk of sliced…….galanga. Yes, galanga. This exotic root tastes like the inside of an old aunt wardrobe, it is something between camphor and cloves. But you need it because, if used sparingly, it adds an unforgettable and subtle aromatic edge to the whole. So you toss around these in butter + oil until golden and you add chunks of fresh, firm pumpkin, the kind of pumpkin that, when cooked, makes you think of egg yolk. I also use three carrots (good tasting ones). You turn everything around for a couple of minutes and then it’s time to add water. Enough water to cover the vegetables but not much more. Instead of water you can use the cooking liquid of rice or pasta (but then adjust salt, if your cooking water was salty). When it boils, I turn the heat off, leave the lid on and just go on with my business. I add the right amount of salt to the cooked vegetables and liquidize them loosely. I eat this soup topped with lots of fresh purslane leaves. The Portuguese option would be to slice very very finely their pointy green cabbage and add it in raw, as if they were spaghetti.