Day 64: Friday Dec 21 ~ End of the World Feast: Pumpkin Soup and Hot Chocolate~

~ End of the World Feast: Pumpkin Soup and Hot Chocolate ~

 

Well, the Mayans must be honored today - don't want to make the gods angry, right? ;0 It might cause the end of the world or something...

Anyway, my first thought was corn, "we call it maize", beans, you know the 3 sisters....but then I found this fun tidbit and decided to go with Pumpkin Soup and Hot Chocolate. I feel that the end of the world is deserving of chocolate, and what better way to give tribute than to consume the thing I am most grateful to this culture for?  :)

A note on the hot chocolate - I was leery of drinking chocolate with only water. I learned on the Hershey's tour this summer that milk is a very important part of milk chocolate - so I was thinking about trying it with even soymilk....then decided to woman up and follow the recipe.
It actually wasn't bad at all! I think the honey not only adds sweetness but body. Now, once you put the cayenne pepper in - it does burn a little going down, at least until it's settled in the liquid. As Worf would say, "this is a warrior's drink". To the Mayans! :)

 

These recipes retrieved from: 
http://car.utsa.edu/Legacy/mayarecipes.htm (via: http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodmaya.html)

*To make the pumpkin soup plant-strong, we skipped the oil and would have used veggie broth v. turkey broth if I had some prepared. Since I didn't, I used 2 cups of water instead. I think this would be good with soymilk or veggie broth to help give it more body - but Jesse & I liked it this way also. :)
P.S. I had pumpkin puree in the freezer, so I skipped the first half. You could also used canned pumpkin to expedite this. And 1/2 my pumpkin was actually hubbard squash. :)

Pumpkin Soup
Recipe by Shanti Morell-Hart

In early pumpkin soup recipes, the pumpkin would have been baked whole in hot ashes. Peeled and chopped pumpkin would then have been thinned with broth from wildfowl or game.
1 small pumpkin, about 12"
2 tbs palm oil
3 tbs honey
1/2 tsp ground allspice
4 c turkey broth
Salt to taste
Thinly sliced onions
Roasted pumpkin seeds, for garnish
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place pumpkin in a baking dish and roast until easily pierced with a knife, about 1 hour. Allow pumpkin to cool, slice off top and scoop out seeds. Clean pumpkin fibers from seeds and discard. Toss seeds with oil and salt to taste. Spread out on a baking sheet and return to oven 15-20 minutes, until crisp and golden. Reserve for garnish.
Scrape the pumpkin flesh from shell and mash, or puree if a smoother mixture is desired.  Place the pumpkin in a large saucepan and season with salt, honey and allspice. Gradually stir in enough broth to make soup with thin or thick consistency, as desired. Simmer over medium heat about 5 minutes, until hot. If desired, serve soup in small pumpkin or squash shells. Garnish with onions and pumpkin seeds.

Hot Chocolate
Recipe by Shanti Morell-Hart

When Cortez and his army arrived in the land of the Aztecs, they were unimpressed by the little dark brown beans many of the Aztecs were carrying, until they learned they were used like money! These beans were cacao beans, a popular trade item before getting ground, roasted, and made into hot chocolate (without milk-- no cows!)  As popular as it was for the Aztecs, chocolate, or xocatl, was originally developed as a food by the Maya.  Sometimes it was made without honey, as a bitter drink, and occasionally even contained chiles, to make it spicy. 
2 ounces (squares) bitter, unsweetened bakers' chocolate
1 cup hot water
3 tablespoons honey
dash salt
3 cups hot water
Chop the chocolate and heat it in 1 cup of water until melted. Add honey and salt.  Beat the hot chocolate with a balloon wire whip as you add 3 cups of hot water.  Serve the foamy hot chocolate with pinch of cayenne pepper.