Cream of pumpkin soup with coconut foam and cayenne pepper

New year, new habits or something like that. That philosophy motivates me these days and I really try to make things better and more efficient then in the past. Besides I promised myself not to look back, but just go forward. Let's see what the magical number 13 brings, after all I was born on a Friday the 13th. As far as cooking is considered I decided to use most of the ingredients that I collected through autumn so that when spring is here my pantry and freezer are more or less empty. My first "victim" today was one of the pumpkins, yeah one of them, there are still 3 left so expect more pumpkin recipes within the next days. This one is a simple pumpkin cream soup, nothing more, nothing less. However, it contains both butter sauteed and oven roasted pumpkin, just like Heston Blumenthal suggests, to achieve a far more complex pumpkin flavor. On the other hand, if you end up with a more or less tasteless pumpkin, well then nothing can save the soup! This pumpkin season I wasn't very lucky with these yellow beauties, however this soup turned out delicious and was really comforting on this pretty cold winter day.

Ingredients:
for the pumpkin soup:
800 g pumpkin
200 ml coconut milk
1 shallot
50 g butter
few rosemary sprigs
2 cloves garlic
800 ml vegetable or chicken stock
salt
cayenne pepper
for the coconut foam:
200 ml coconut milk
2 g lecithin

Preheat the oven to 200°C and bake half of the pumpkin with 2-3 sprigs of rosemary and garlic. Peel both the baked and the raw pumpkin. Melt butter and add chopped onions and the raw pumpkin cubes and sautee for 15 minutes. Then add baked pumpkin, coconut milk and stock and cook for 20-25 minutes. Then puree soup and add a fresh rosemary sprig and let it stand for about 15 minutes. Season with salt and cayenne pepper. In case the soup is too thick then use some stock or coconut water to achieve the desired consistency. For the coconut foam bring coconut milk to the boil and lecithin and whip it with a mixer. Serve with an extra sprinkle of cayenne pepper.