Erev Purim - Spicy Butternut Soup with Dumplings and Poppy Seed Pastries

Tonight is Erev Purim (eve of Purim) - the celebration of Esther, Queen of Persia, who saved her Jewish community while married to King Ahasuerus of Persia. It's traditional to eat triangular foods that represent the villain (he did try to kill all Jews in Persia) Haman's triangular hat (or pockets) so I decided to make Bombay Potato Kreplach (triangular dumplings) in Spicy Butternut Soup and Mohn Hamantaschen (Poppy Seed Triangular Pastries) - they taste amazing and I'm usually not a fan of poppy seeds.
It's also customary to give 2 different types of food to an adult and give charity to 2 poor people on Purim.

Hamantaschen - they reminded Damon of his childhood! :-)

From the 3 recipes above only the Spicy Butternut Soup and Bombay Potato filling are my "creation" so I'll post links to the other recipes.

Kreplach (made about 12 dumplings - though I can't be sure as I ate quite a couple of them along the way)

Kreplach in Soup

I made the filling first:

Bombay Potato Mash

Ingredients:
2 potatoes, peeled, chopped and steamed/boiled. Grossly mashed.
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp turmeric
chillies or chilly powder to your taste
Olive oil
3-5 Tbsp milk
A knob of butter

How to:
Pour a good "swig" of olive oil in a pan and heat on medium heat.
Add the mustard seeds and wait until they've "popped" (you might want to cover the pan as the seeds tend to jump all over the place). Add the turmeric and chillies and heat up for about one minute.
Add the potatoes to the pan until they are all coated evenly with spices and turn to a lovely golden yellow colour.
Take off the heat, add a knob of butter and the milk to make an extra creamy, smooth mash.
Keep aside and let cool down to room temperature.

I used this recipe for the dough.
To make it easier I posted a shortened version. 
Ingredients:
2 cups flour (I use spelt flour and that seemed to work quite well)
½ tsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil
2 egg yolks
½ cup water or as much/little as you need
1 ½ tsps baking powder

How to:
Mix everything together.
Roll out the dough thinly onto a floured surface and cut out square 5cm x 5cm.
Put a small teaspoonful of potato mash in the middle of the square. Fold the dough into a triangle over the filling.
I always struggle to close dumplings with my fingers.

Spicy Butternut Soup

Ingredients:
1 butternut
2 Tbsp yellow or red curry paste
1 tin coconut milk
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

How to:
Preheat oven to 200C.
Cut butternut in halves, removes seeds and cut each piece in half. Put into an oven-proof dish and drizzle olive oil generously over the butternut. Cook for an hour or until butternut gets really soft.
Once it is soft enough, simply scoop out the flesh from the skin (I HATE peeling butternut, just ask my old room mate!) and put it in a large pot.
Add the coconut milk and curry paste to the butternut. Blend until smooth. Start heating the soup on medium heat, add water until it reaches the desired consistency.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

Tonight I added some of the leftover Bombay Potato mash from the dumplings into the soup as well, so delicious! 
If you make the dumplings, serve the soup with a couple of dumplings in it. 

For the Hamantaschen, I used the Shiksa in the Kitchen's recipes: 

I made the dough (I only made 4 cups of flour worth of dough and it made a LOT of Hamantaschen) first so it had time to rest in the fridge and then the Mohn - a sweet poppy seed filling ("Mohn" means poppy seed in German - thanks Wilhelm!).

Mohn, dough and finished Hamantaschen - heaven!

I used the Shiksa's method of rolling the edges of dough into a triangle rather than folding them over the filling.