butternut squash soup

Now with improved plated dish! ↑

Kind Sir, if you would be so gentlemanly, would you please allow me to cut you in half?

Select the largest, sharpest, most menacing knife you own. This isn't a job for sissies.

Rub with oil and roast. The sweet potatoes are for something else later. Although, they could do no harm here.

While that was going on ↑, and before they're removed from the oven, start up whatever else you intend for this soup. In this case, I was going for full-on forest/harvest type flavors. Mine would have leeks, garlic, shitaki and portobello mushrooms blended in, with cubed russet potato and corn not blended in. It would include bay and sage because I have them, thus the color change from bright orange to olive green. The base is chicken stock, but it could just as easily be vegetable or beef.

These were the dirtiest leeks I've ever seen in my life. They took quite a scrubbing.

Leeks, mushroom, herbs cooking in a pot

Roasted butternut squash brought together with cooked leeks and mushrooms, processed in a Cuisinart. My Cuisinart bowl leaked all over the place. That wasn't unusual, I always make a mess, but this seemed different because it wasn't topped off. I looked closely at the apparent source of the leak and wiped it. It leaked again. Peering even more closely I could see a crack in the bowl. Mah dadgum Cuisinart bowl gone 'n got itself cracked! So I ordered a replacement for it on Amazon, because a cracked Cuisinart bowl is absolutely unacceptable! What does it think we're running over here, some kind of romper room?

Loosen with chicken broth if you must. After this processing in the Cuisinart, or blender, or immersion blender, or hand mill, whatever you've got, the smooth thick mixture is returned to the original cooking pot in which the leaks and mushrooms were sweated and softened. Chicken broth is added to the desired viscosity, and the whole shebang cooked until the cubed potatoes are softened. Frozen corn was added because I was going for an Americanized thing here: squash, potato, corn. I almost diced a fresh tomato on top for an American Yankee Doodle decoration and additional color, but I was getting tired and a little bit lazy.

The cream added at the end imparts a wonderful silkiness and transcendent mouthfeel. You don't need much. The nutmeg was just a natural impulse, it always goes with things like this, and anything with cream in it. I could have also added allspice, cinnamon, clove, the usual holiday suspects, but I omitted those in favor of a trace of cumin, which is an outlier spice for a dish like this, but I don't care, it's the kind of incomprehensible impulse that makes my own personal touches so unpredictable and unreplicatable. ←I made up that word. I was surprised with the sweetness of this considering all I did to wrench it into the savory realm and away from the world of sweetness and light. I didn't add anything sweet to it at all. I'm guessing that roasting the butternut developed its own sugars. Whatever. It is absolutely delicious beyond anything I expected. Kids would like this, especially if it was kept bright orange or yellow, meaning, by not adding anything with chlorophyl as I did and avoiding stronger or deeper spices, as I am prone to become carried away.

If you think this doesn't make a proper mess of your entire kitchen then all I have to say to you is, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

[I praised the Lord for the invention of dishwashers, but He said, He didn't have anything to do with that.]

sweet potato, butternut squash soup

Apparently the most downloaded holiday recipe from the NYT online site. The following recipe is nicked from the NYT.

[ This silky fall/winter puree tastes rich, though there is no cream or butter in it.


1 tablespoon canola oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 pound butternut squash, peeled and diced

1 pound sweet potatoes, peeled and diced

1 medium-size Yukon gold or russet potato, peeled and diced

6 cups water, chicken stock, or vegetable stock

Salt to taste

1. Heat the oil in a heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the ginger and stir together until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the squash, sweet potatoes, regular potato, and water or stock, and bring to a simmer. Add salt to taste, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 45 minutes, or until all of the ingredients are thoroughly tender.

2. Using an immersion blender, puree the soup (or you can put it through the fine blade of a food mill or use a regular blender, working in batches and placing a kitchen towel over the top to avoid splashing). Return to the pot and stir with a whisk to even out the texture. Heat through, adjust salt and add pepper to taste. ]

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What? No butter? No cream? That's nonsense. I put both in mine. What would be the point of leaving them out? If NYT was serious about health they'd have insisted on salt-free home-made chicken broth and not leave it to their readers to error by ruining their soup with overly salty canned broth or even broth in a carton which is an improvement but only hardly. It's barely bullion and water. Home-made chicken broth is 100% aspic, the gelatin extracted from bone marrow, and infinitely richer than commercial broth. Period. Right here is where your broth is put to best use. Ferchristssake. Also, I positively do not understand the dearth of spices. What are they, ascetics over there at the NYT or what? Yo no lo comprendo. Surely, they're intending this as merely a starting point for their reader's own elaboration. This recipe screams for touches of cinnamon, specks of clove, possibly allspice, and definitely nutmeg. Garlic pairs naturally with ginger and goes excellently well with gourds. All of that in amounts so minute compared to the total volume, that it's barely noticeable and in no wise competes with the flavors of roasted sweet potato and butternut squash but adds mysterious flavor and body that has to be tasted to be believed. The potato is almost gratuitous. It's there to add starch and to thicken the soup. I do not understand not suggesting roasting the vegetables rather than just jumping right in and boiling them. Boiling vegetables dilutes their naked flavor into the water, on the other hand, roasting them develops flavor and intensifies it. The depth and breadth of complexity of flavors is completely absent by simply boiling them. Roasting the vegetables causes them to caramelize and then the caramelization undergoes further complex chemical reactions. The sweetness of roasted vegetables is simply outstanding.

I'm such a dunce. After all that, I forgot to buy ginger. Luckily I have crystalized ginger and powdered ginger, but those are whole 'nuther animals. I used both but understated them because they are different and I didn't want the soup to be BANG !, ginger.

Used a couple of leeks because I had them and wanted to use them. They were roasted along with the gourds and potatoes.

This soup would benefit from some citric. Grated orange peel would be excellent.

It would not be harmed by chile pepper flakes. Paprika, dashes of Tabasco, habanero. Anything hot. It could even stand a few dashes of your favorite curry. Look, if you're going to all the trouble of making your own soup, then plan a party for your mouth. That's my attitude.