Saturday, October 31, 2009

Butternut Squash Soup

This was a very time-consuming recipe, and unfortunately I'm not so sure it was worth it. Again, maybe I didn't follow it exactly (I left out some of the optional ingredients, particularly marscapone and half and half). My biggest failure was just not reading the whole recipe. If I had read it closely, I would have seen that you are supposed to toast the coriander seeds and then grind them. I just added them to the roast and wound up with broken coriander shells in the soup -- serious disappointment -- but I ran it through a strainer. It's okay now.


Thursday night I roasted the squash in the oven. I got a huge butternut squash and wrestled off the rind, scooped the seeds, and cubed it. I melted butter and seasoned it with molasses, sugar, and balsamic vinegar. I seasoned it with red and black pepper, coriander seeds, sage, cinnamon, and salt. I let this all roast for an hour and it was smelling good and looking promising.


I let it cool slightly, ran it through the food processor, and popped the batch in the fridge for later. I actually have enough of this puree to make a second batch of the soup, so I have half of it in the freezer now, coriander pellets and all.

Yesterday, which turned out to be the warmest day of the month, I made the rest of the soup with celery, onion, and carrot; a cinnamon stick; and broth. This part of cooking it went pretty quickly and finished with a quick run through the blender.

The recipe I found says to add half and half or marscapone, but I left mine without the dairy (although I did use real butter in the roasting). This was pretty good, but it didn't wow me after all the effort I put into it. I think I'll look for another recipe to try if I want to make this kind of soup again. Any suggestions?

2 comments:

  1. I find that adding a chopped apple to a butternut squash soup adds a little something extra. Cook it long enough for the apple to break down.(I don't like adding dairy to all my soups, either, so I don't blame you for skipping that part.) Grated nutmeg to finish it also seems to push it over the edge from OK to really yummy.

    I'm not sure coriander is the right match to butternut squash -- I think cumin or cardamom would be better choices.

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  2. Thanks for the tips! This is one I'd like to try again with a different recipe.

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