Pumpkin Fish Head soup

I was not a fan of fish head soup. Actually, I do not like fish. So every month when I clean the fishes and cut up the fish filet for my MIL, I will end up with at least 4 fish heads. We are talking about fish heads from snappers and threadfin. Each fish weight 2.5 kg and above.  So sometimes, I will end up with large fish heads too. All these are bought with cash. So I need to turn these into delicious meals so that the fresh fish head is being appreciated.
For a start, since these fishes are very fresh, I will steam them with salted vege (teochew steam). Everyone loves it except my MIL was not impress.  She reprimanded us that salted vege is not good for our health.  So I started to explore other ideas like curry or assam fish head. I even cook it as sweet and sour fish. The last takes a lot of my time, though delicious but not much meat to eat.
After learning from a colleague that her maid cook fish head soup just by boiling them for 1 hour, I decided to try out.
I decided to pan-fry it before I put to boil as I can smell the fishy smell and cannot just put it in to boil like that. I add ginger to kill the fishy smell and finished off with tofu, tomato and fried garlic and top with coriander.  Not bad.
I decided to explore further. So every month, there will be a big pot of fish head soup when we refill fishes for my MIL.
One day, I decided to throw the cut pumpkin that was left in my fridge for a week into the fish soup just to clear my ingredients. And wow, we love the taste of the sweetness.  Honestly, I have never come across pumpkin fish head soup and here, I have created my own unique recipe.

The amount of ingredients is up to you. The more fish you place, the more rich the flavor is.
Here is how I did it.
1. Place a pot with water (half of water required for soup) to boil. Throw in celery, crushed ginger, garlic, shallots.
2. Use a frying wok, coat the wok with oil. (No need too much). On high fire, pan fry the fish. Turn over when the fish is brown. (No need fish to be cooked. Just need the outer layer to brown to kill the fishy smell).
3. When both sides are brown, add some water in the wok. This will also help to clean up some sides that stick to wok.
4. By now, the water in pot should be boiling.
5. Transfer the fish head over to the pot. Let it boil before you add more water to your needs.
6. Let above boil under low fire for 25 mins.
7. Add pumpkin, tomato and wolf-berries and boil for another 10 to 15 mins.
8. Add salt n tau cheo to taste.
9. Let it rest for 10 mins before serve.
10. You may add fried garlic to soup for a more "phang phang" fragant fish head soup.
ENJOY!!!

*TIPS
1. You can remove oil from soup before you add pumpkin. It is always visible.  The  wok shovel works better than spoon or soup ladle.
2. Fish head n pumpkin will melt if boil too long.
3. Boiled soup taste better after leaving it to rest for 10mins.
The above tips are learnt from my trial n error while cooking😊