• 1 medium or small pumpkin
• 2 carrots
• 1 onion
• tablespoon of ground coriander
• thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger
• 1 litre of stock – I used chicken
• 2 cardamom pods
• tablespoon double cream

Chop the onion roughly and fry in some oil until soft along with the ground coriander. Then peel, seed and dice the pumpkin, and fry off along with the diced carrots and peeled, chopped ginger.

When it’s all looking soft, crush 2 cardamom pods and squeeze the seeds into the mix. I threw the husks in as well. Add the chicken stock, bring to the boil and then simmer for half an hour.

Remove the cardamom husks, if you left them in, and blitz with a hand-blender or in a food processor. Add salt and pepper to taste, and stir in the cream. Enjoy!

• Half a dozen small potatoes, chopped
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 clove of garlic
• 2 carrots, thinly sliced
• 1 leaf of curly kale
• small wedge of pumpkin, chopped
• 600ml chicken stock (or veg if you must)
• stick of celery, sliced

Fry the onion in a bit of olive oil, then add the veg and fry until starting to go soft. Add the stock, some salt and plenty of black pepper. Simmer for about 40 minutes and blitz with a hand-blender or in a Magimix. Serve with freshly-baked soda bread.

It all went. William had thirds – though I may have been a bit economical with the truth when it came to the ingredients…

• Large pumpkin
• 1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
• large knob of butter
• 4 large carrots
• 2 large onions
• cumin seeds
• ground cinnamon
• ground ginger
• nutmeg

Scoop the inside of the pumpkin with an ice-cream scoop. Keep the seeds to one side and chop the pumpkin flesh. Save the empty pumpkin either for use as a soup tureen or to make a lantern.

Fry the onions gently in the butter for 5 minutes with a few cumin seeds, taking care not to brown the onions. Add the chopped carrots, pumpkin and stock. Add salt, pepper, ground ginger and cinnamon to taste – I used about a quarter of a teaspoon of ginger & cinnamon – a bit more would probably have been even nicer. Simmer on a low heat, lid on for about half an hour. Whizz up with a hand blender or food processor and serve with crusty bread, grating nutmeg on top. Perfect after an autumn walk in the park!

For the seeds… put the oven on a low heat – no more than 125 centigrade. Wash the seeds removing any flesh or stringy bits, pat dry with kitchen roll. Place on a baking tray in the oven until quite dry – took about half an hour. You can then put them in salads, or do what I did – toss them in a little sunflower oil and lots of sea-salt – deeeelishous!