Indian Curry Pumpkin Soup

I have a hard time deciding on a favorite season. The freshness of spring, the bright green grass, the tender spring peas, the flowers, I just adore them. I am so excited for the first asparagus to arrive, the strawberries and peas. And then summer, with its lazy days and long vacations, tomatoes with olive oil and sea salt, skirts and sandals, baths and outdoor activities. And I can even find something lovely in the cold Swiss winters. I love the first snow of the season, walking on snow, a cold fogless day in the mountains, wearing scarves.
But every year, I seem to say, mid October, that Fall has to be my favorite season. My heart makes a little happy dance when I see the first pumpkins and squashes. I can start to drink tea again, wrap myself in a scarf or blanket, light candles, and get back into cooking. For while I love tomatoes with sea salt and a drizzle of olive oil and a few slices of mozzarella di buffala, they inspire little cooking.
So at the beginning of Fall, I carry home as much butternut squash and pumpkin as I can carry. 
When I started out making this soup, I actually planned on making a pumpkin curry with big chunks of pumpkin. What I did not account for was the pumpkin becoming all stringy in the process of cooking, so I decided to add a little broth and puree it.
The resulting soup is different enough from the pumpkin soup I normally make, the curry makes it somewhat spicy, which makes for a really warming soup. 

With fall comes the fact that it gets dark way too quickly to take shots of food in natural light. I think I need to go back to Debs answers on how she takes pictures of her food without natural light. How do you deal? Just cook earlier in the day?

Heidi's Feisty Green Beans

I love Heidi Swanson from 101cookbooks.com. I have tried out quite a few recipes she posted on her blog and I think I could cook everything on it and it would be a hit. I love her lemony chickpea stir-fry, I have made it several times already, and I don't usually cook the same things over and over again. A few months ago, I made this recipe for green beans and used Halloumi instead of the tofu in it. My boyfriend ate the leftovers cold and loved it, but I knew I had to make it again. I changed a few minor things, but basically it's the same recipe. It is somewhat difficult to describe the flavor of this dish, it definitely has Indian flavors from all the spices, but the wine doesn't quite fit into the Indian label. I served it with Basmati rice, sprinkled with some of the toasted almonds. I will be making this again, once everything is cut, toasted, chopped, etc, the preparation is really easy.

Eggplants Calcutta

I bought a new cookbook a few weeks ago. There is something about cookbooks I just can't resist. I love books with a lot of images in them, mostly because I refer to my cookbooks as source of inspiration and rarely follow a recipe as it is.
My newest addition to my cookbook collection is "World Food Café" by Carolyn and Chris Caldicott. My boyfriend turned vegetarian a few months ago and I needed a cookbook with lots of interesting vegetarian recipes. (Actually I don't think I "needed" one, but hey, I somehow have to justify buying another cookbook, don't I?)

A few days ago I tried their Eggplant Calcutta. It is quite sweet, but the garlic and the cilantro give it a more complex flavor. Adding a lot of garlic is necessary here, without it it would be bland.
I changed a few things, so here is how I did it: