For the past two or three weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of cooking at home, and you know what that means: time for another edition of Adventures in Domesticity! In fact, we’ll be having several editions over the next week or so as I’ve tried my hand at several dishes â€â€Ã‚ almost all of which were both international, and oddly enough, orange in color. Huh.
First up on my pumpkin-colored trip around the world was butternut squash, courtesy of the Hamptons. That’s right, I decided to try out a recipe from Ina Garten’s cookbook, Back to Basics. It was the least I could do after having waited for hours to get it autographed. My attempt valiant attempt to cook up the soup after the jump…
First, let me say that when I started making the soup, I forgot to take pictures; so you’re all missing out on the exciting chop and season phase of this experience. I hope you’ll understand.
That being said, I chose this recipe because it’s winter and cold (a.k.a. about fifty degrees at the time), and nothing says cozy soup like butternut squash. Also, it happens to be one of Ina’s healthiest recipes in that there is no butter WHATSOEVER anywhere near the dish. Strange, I know. Oh, and the other reason was because I had just bought a food mill, and I wanted to get some use out of it.
Anyway, per Ina’s instructions, I chopped up some onion, some apple, and some butternut squash. Well, the butternut squash was already pre-chopped â€â€Ã‚ and at about $3.39/pound, this was a bit pricey for a veggie soup (three to four pounds were called for â€â€Ã‚ I went cheap and only got three).
Once everything was chopped and drizzled with oil and various seasonings, I put the veggies into the oven and roasted them for about forty minutes.
Voila.
Meanwhile, I simmered about three cups of chicken stock on the stovetop on low while the veggies roasted.
Not as exciting, but it’s part of the process.
Finally, it’s time for the food mill.
The excitement of simple tools! I will say that on TV, the chefs always make the food mill process seem so quick and effortless. IT’S NOT. It takes forever.
Eventually, I managed to puree all the vegetables. I added the chicken stock, some curry powder, and just like that the soup was ready!
As for the results? Mostly positive. First off, I definitely needed more liquid to make it a soup, not just a puree. The consistency came out thick like apple sauce. A problem could have been that I lost too much stock during the simmering process. To remedy that, I just added water to the soup until it was the consistency that I wanted. Didn’t affect the flavor at all.
Ultimately, it was a very interesting butternut squash soup. I’ve had a lot of these, and this was unlike any of the others. That’s not a bad thing. It just was different. And, as soups are wont to do, it got better every day. I would certainly make it again.
As a bonus, since I took so few photos of the soup, here are some pictures of some sautéed mushrooms I made on the other burner.
