Hello, I'm Hester
Between the Dots is a journal dedicated to the quiet beauty found in ordinary moments. A space to share glimmers of light and hope, discover the world, and not shy away from tough questions. Welcome. I hope you’ll find yourself at home between these stories of things we tend to overlook.
table of contents
- ......................................... quiet beauty
- ...................................... simple recipes
- ............................................ slow travel
- ....................................... sustainability
- ................................................... health
- ............................................... Theology
- ................................ on being a woman
- ............................................... marriage
- .............................................. thoughts
I still remember the first time I tried pumpkin – which isn’t too surprising as it was only four years ago. After five months of travelling, we found ourselves in a hostel with a kitchen in São Paulo, Brazil, and just realised while in a supermarket that groceries were rather on the expensive side. So instead of buying familiar ingredients that would break the bank, we decided on ingredients that were somewhat affordable. And that’s how we ended up with half a pumpkin, a couple of stock cubes, something resembling crème fraîche, and a piece of bread.
The kitchen in our hostel was minimally equipped, so after we chopped the pumpkin into cubes with the one sharp knife available to us, and cooking the pieces in a frying pan, we had to mash them with a fork until it was mushy enough to mix with the stock and make a soup out of it. The stories you take home from travelling… But now we’re at home, we have a stick blender to do all the hard work for us.
This recipe originally didn’t start out as a soup. We were trying to make a recipe from NOPI, the cookbook, but only discovered at 7.30 PM that a bunch of halved tomatoes needed to sunbathe in the oven for 80 (!) minutes. Since we already prepared everything else, it was time for a new plan. This is the result.
the recipe
ingredients
1kg butternut squash
olive oil
salt + black pepper
3 cm piece of ginger
1 red chilli
750ml vegetable stock
120g coconut yogurt
1/2tsp ground cardamom
zest + juice of 1/2 lime
serves 4
- Preheat the oven to 220ᵒC.
- Cut the butternut squash in half, remove the seeds, then cut into 2,5cm wide slices. Mix with 2tbsp olive oil and a good grind of salt and black pepper. Place the slices on a baking tray and roast for 35 to 40 minutes.
- Finely chop the ginger and chilli, and grind them into a paste in a mortar and pestle.
- Grab a soup pan, and heat 1tbsp olive oil. Add the ginger and chilli paste, but make sure the paste doesn’t make a backflip out of the mortar and makes the oil splash everywhere. Cook for a couple of minutes, add the stock, and let simmer until the pumpkin is ready.
- In a small bowl, mix 120g coconut yogurt with 1/2tsp ground cardamom, the zest and juice of 1/2 lime, 1/2tsp of salt, and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until ready to serve.
- When the pumpkin is ready, add it to the stock, and blend everything together with a stick blender. If the soup is a little thick for your liking, add a little more stock or water. Season to taste, and serve with the lime yogurt.
