The food coma has subsided for the most part. Now onto the Roasted Butternut Squash Apple Potato Carrot Garlic & Shallot Soup Experiment. Well, there you have it.
Just kidding.
I received a Soup cookbook for a Christmas present about 13 or 14 years ago and I finally decided to make something based loosely on what I found in it. That’s where the Squash and Apple part came from. I probably should have actually looked at the recipe because it took FOREVER to roast the squash. The apples came out after about 25 minutes @ 375F. I’m getting ahead of myself.
Cut the Butternut Squash (best color on a Chip Foose truck design EVER) from top to bottom in half. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to peel a raw squash – it’s SO much easier to do when it’s cooked!!!
Cut the apples in half from top to bottom – you could do side to side but you’ll get all distracted by the awesome star that magically appears and go do some printing or something – soup forgotten…
I put lemon juice on the apples right away to stop them from browning.
After scooping out the squash guts (reserved for later to clean up and roast or dry and plant) I spread a thin layer of honey over the top, threw a clove of garlic and half a shallot into the holes. Opened the spice drawer… hmm… Mace, Sage, Garlic Pepper and… I think that was it actually. Our new kitchen is amazing. I love it. It took some getting used to because there are more drawers than cupboards but I LOVE having the spices laying down in a drawer. The only problem now is space. I might need to build a rack to fit in the drawer to maximize the footage…SOUP, right.
The apples were done after a short time as I said. I put them aside – peeled a bit later which was super easy. I did NOT put them in cold water because I spiced them too. They still peeled perfectly with a little pull. No wasted apple at all.
The squash – #$&*@(#&(@&! I cranked the oven up to 400F and after checking on it more than once it was ready after about an hour? So at least 90 minutes in oven total. Next time, read the gd recipe at least for cooking times!
Side note, if you want your house to smell amazing roast a couple of apples with spices. Holy crap.
Anyway, long story longer I put the good blender jug in the fridge with half of the Smoothie I made earlier and forgot to have for breakfast this morning. So, to the old standby. The smoothie blender came with Jacob. So it’s relatively new. My blender is the one I bought when I had my daughter so I could make my own baby food (pfft, right). We just bought 22 candles to put on her cake a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, we did not put them on the cake. See I Am A Cake Blob Artist for further information. Needless to say, this baby is tired. And I knew that. But, I used it anyway. The smell of burning rubber almost entirely eliminated the beautiful spiced apple smell, but not quite. I kept thinking of Steve Earle’s lyric from the Warrior, “bi-acrid fumes of death’s cacophony”. Hmm.
After 20 minutes of torturing the poor blender I had pureed the hell out of the squash, apple, garlic and shallots I tasted it. It did not taste like bi-acrid fumes but it was way too sweet. Shit. Jacob walked in. By the end of our welcome home honey conversation it was decided that he would pull apart the blender to see if he could clean it or something and I would boil some potatoes and carrots to kill the sickly sweet flavor, I mean balance the bouquet?
Sliced up 4 medium yellowish potatoes, 2 large carrots, boiled them up and blended them into the squash mix with my trusty hand blender which I should have used from the beginning. I added about 3 cups of chicken broth (used a cube – I won’t deny it…), reheated it and simmered it while I cooked croutons from multi-grain bread which I thought were gross and burnt. Jacob still said he thought it was amazing but he put the crumbs in too so he really has no idea what the soup tasted like! He’ll find out tonight because it’s so filling there’s still a pot full in the fridge!
All said and done, not including me picking it apart the whole time we ate it took most of the afternoon to prepare. Would I do it again? Yes. But with less honey if any at all because what a mess on the pan. And I have to learn to make croutons because those were awful. And I have to read a gd recipe to find out the proper cooking times. It’s always faster the second time around right? Oh yeah, I also added the potatoes and carrots because the squash stuff on it’s own reminded me so much of the baby food I never made 22 years ago. Maybe I should make baby food. *shudder*
I did not get very many good pictures of this. Largely in part due to the lighting in my kitchen. And the heavily saturated gorgeous color of Butternut Squash. WOW. I highly recommend getting one and trying something with it, but be careful! They are not easy to cut. I’m determined to grow some in the spring. I had some growing inside from an Acorn Squash but I did that thing where I forget to water them. Oops.
Diary Of A Short Attention Span 