Rice-milk-and-pumpkin soup
( Riso, latte e zucca )

Recipe for milk-pumpkin-rice soup

Preparation and cooking

• - Steam the pumpkin and then mash it with a fork.
• - Bring the milk to the boil and at this point add the rice.
• - A few minutes before the end of cooking season to taste with salt and add the pumpkin too!
• - Stir with a wooden spoon very frequently.
• - Turn off the stove, add chives and aromatize with sweet paprika if you like.
• - Add the hot pumpking cooking water if necessary and your soup isn't creamy according to your own taste.

Just before serving

• - Let your soup rest for few minutes before serving

Note

Tips

• - This soup is delicious with brown rice too.
• - You can dilute milk with water; for example 500ml (1 pint - 2 cups) water + 500ml milk.
• - You can add other ingredients to this soup according to your own taste, for example a knob of butter.
  I like it exactly as I've just showed you. It tastes fantastic!
• - Someone makes rice, milk and pumpkin like a risotto. I prefer it made as soup.
• - My recipe is slightly different from those ones proposed by many other Italian cookbooks or websites. Someone put diced raw pumpkin to cook together with milk and rice. From the nutritional point of view it would seem better but I typically reuse the pumpkin cooking water because, using good-quality rice, I always need more than 10 minutes. So I need to dilute my milk. Neither do I lose pumpkin nutrients ;)
  Then I add that I tried these alternative recipes but it happened to me that the pumpkin didn't dissolve completely. I will never give up the family recipe.

Menu planning

• - Rice, milk and pumpkin is a dish for your family menu, easy to do and not rich in fat. If you serve this soup as first course it serves 3, on the contrary if served as one-plate meal, it serves 2.
• - If you are vegetarian your menu can be completed with other vegetables in season (autumn and winter) and seasonal fresh fruit.
  On the contrary you can choose a second course, light and delicate, to complete your menu. For example, a portion of fat-free Parma ham (50g - 1 3/4 ounce), of course without bread, and raw vegetables to munch on. This menu plan is for those who want to follow a healthy balanced diet.
  Obviously I'm not talking of a weight loss diet but of a 2000 kcal /day diet for people who want to maintain a healthy weight.

Useful links for this recipe

• - Interested in seafood sauce for lasagna with pumpkin too? Follow the link!

Healthy eating

• - I calculated the nutrition facts of rice-milk-and-pumpkin soup with skimmed milk. For whole milk lovers these are the calories (471 kcal) and fat (12.9 g). Proteins and sugars do not show significant changes.
• - Pumpkin belongs to the group of yellow vegetables and is rich in carotene and provitamin A. It also has many minerals including potassium, iron, magnesium and phosphorus. Not bad content in vitamin C. It seems to help to lower the glucose level in the blood and regulate the production of insulin. For all these reasons use it as much as possible. On the other hand, pumpkin is very versatile and enters as an ingredient in many recipes, both savory and sweet. For example, I learned to add some pieces to the pasta sauce too. Special the sauce for seafood pasta. Link in the paragraph above.
• - Fiber per serving: 2.6 grams (daily intake: 30 grams)

Loretta

What's the right wine for " Rice-milk-and-pumpkin soup "?

My husband and I pair a good young red wine when in season or a white wine such as Lison Pramaggiore (Veneto).