Cream of pumpkin soup

Just as we wait for tomato soup in the summer, we wait for pumpkins in the fall to make this incredibly good soup. It has intense flavor and sage flavor that takes the mundane cream soup to another level. To give you an idea of how good it is, with this soup I convinced a pumpkin "non-eater" to eat pumpkin. For us, it's one of the staple soups of the fall-winter season. It's just as good in the fasting season when we use vegetable soup and don't shave Parmesan cheese on top. We always try to use butternut squash, it has a much firmer and more flavourful flesh.

1. In a large pot put 3-4 tablespoons of oil and toss the sage leaves to crisp. Remove them quickly, after about 30 seconds, and place them on a paper towel to drain the oil.
2. Chop the onion, carrot and celery. Peel and crush the garlic.
3. Add all the chopped vegetables, garlic, salt and pepper to the sage-flavoured oil.
4. Sauté the vegetables for about 10' until soft.
5. Now add the chopped pumpkin and vegetable or chicken soup.
6. Cover the pot and simmer for about 30'.
7. Check that the pumpkin is soft and remove from the heat.
8. Now you're going to cream the vegetables, but to make it easier to mash, remove some of the juice to another pot so that you have some of the vegetables left in the large pot with a little juice.
9. Puree the vegetables with a blender until creamy, add the remaining juice and blend until smooth.
10. Soup is ready!
11. For serving I also made some croutons. I diced a few slices of bread, put them on a tray and roasted them in the oven on both sides.
12. I put the soup in the bowl, 3 toasted sage leaves, 3-4 croutons and grated parmesan cheese on top. Don't skip this last step! The croutons, roasted sage and parmesan fully complement the flavor of this soup.