Butternut Squash & Apple Soup

Today I officially conceded to the inevitable arrival of autumn, and yanked the screens out of the windows and put in the storm windows. This also means that I relocated a LOT of spiders to the basement, as apparently my windows are prime real estate for arachnids. In addition to getting increasingly chilly, for the past few days we've been getting biblical amounts of rain. So much rain that my dogs, ostensibly water dogs (Labradors) refuse to go outside to pee until they're about to pop. Admittedly, these are not exactly stalwart gun dogs (I think Pandora is incapable of sleeping anywhere that doesn't have at least two pillows), but still.

This is all a slightly round about way of saying that it is serious soup weather. I am an enormous proponent of soups year round, but when the skies have been gray for 3 days, and my basement could be optimistically referred to as an indoor pool with a substantial mud problem, I need a pot of warm, rich soup.

From this week's CSA I had a couple of nice butternut squash, and there were two increasingly sad Honey Crisp apples languishing in the fruit bowl from an earlier trip to a nearby orchard. (I feel that you effectively rid yourself of the calories accrued by cider donut consumption if you buy some fruit at the same time...) Also, in a fit of terrifying domesticity, I'd roasted a chicken last weekend and then actually made stock from the carcass and frozen it. Since I usually have good intentions of doing exactly that, but far more frequently end up with a frightening foil-encased chicken corpse in the back of the fridge, and a desperate trip to the trash outside, I was pretty damn pleased with myself.

All of this meant that I had the makings of a decent, appropriately autumnal soup. What follows is, as all soup recipes should be, just a loose baseline. I know there are people out there who don't care for ginger, so I'm going to include some alternate seasoning choices. The only pain in the ass of this recipe is the peeling and cubing of the butternut squash, and if you want to avoid that, you could very easily swap out frozen squash puree (I'd use about 2 packages from the freezer section) and save yourself some trouble.

This would be nicely complemented by some decent bread and a salad. And a Caramel Porter, if you have one floating around.

Curried Butternut Squash & Apple Soup

Ingredients

2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 large yellow onions, finely diced
3 tbsp freshly grated ginger root (1 tsp rosemary for the ginger-phobic)
1 tsp turmeric (omit if not using ginger, use 1 tsp thyme instead)
salt and pepper
2 apples (something firm and a bit tart, like Honey Crisp, Granny Smith)
1 large or 2 small butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed (or 2 pkgs frozen squash, thawed)
6 cups chicken stock (or vegetable, if you'd like this to be a vegetarian soup)
1/2 cup half-and-half
Sour cream to garnish
Cilantro to garnish (again, omit this if you're using the rosemary/thyme combo...it'd be weird)

• In a soup pot over medium-high heat, melt the butter. Saute the onion until softened, about 3 minutes.


• Add the apples, squash, ginger and turmeric and cook until starting to soften and nicely fragrant (about 5 minutes).


• Add stock (and, if using the rosemary/thyme combo, those herbs) and bring to a simmer.


• Reduce heat to medium and simmer, covered, for about 35-40 minutes, or until the squash is very, very tender. Make sure you can easily poke a fork in it, as you need to be able to puree this with ease.

...now at this point, you have a couple of options. You're going to need to puree this stuff, and you can either remove it from the heat and put it through a blender and/or food processor, or you can be very grateful that your parents gave you an immersion blender for Christmas a few years ago, and just whir the soup in the pot. And if you don't have such a handy device, they can be had cheaply, and are pretty fabulous to have around. It saves a lot of hot soup splattering about (although you do want to be sure you use it in a relatively high-sided pot, as there will be some over spray), and for me, saves me hauling the little-used blender out from under the sink. The immersion blender will give you a rougher puree, versus a very smooth product from the blender...so whatever flips your kilt.

• Puree soup using weapon of your choice. Stir in half-and-half and season with salt and pepper to taste. Reheat gently over medium-low heat.


• Ladle into bowls, dollop some sour cream in the middle, and sprinkle with some fresh cilantro if using the ginger/turmeric combo, or a little thyme if using rosemary/thyme.

Makes 4-6 servings.

...explosions of this much home-maker-y crap tend to make me overcompensate with the most gangster music available. This post was brought to you largely by the fine musical stylings of 2Pac...somehow, I don't think it's the soundtrack Martha opts for. (Although maybe she does...that'd make her far more bad ass than I tend to give her credit for.)