A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a squash soup recipe that I made. I had a couple of requests for the recipe, so here 'tiz. I waited to blog it because I wanted to see how much of the actual recipe I followed. My mother taught me to cook more on feeling and taste as opposed to exact measurements. The original recipe is from The Joy of Cranberries (this is an awesome series, I also have Joy of Rhubarb and have learned that you can get Joy of Cherries, Joy of Apples and Joy of Blueberries too).
So here is the basic ingredient list from the book:
Because cranberries aren't yet in season, I omitted the cranberry part and just made the soup itself. I also changed the quantities of some of the ingredients. I used one butternut squash that was not a pound and a half worth like the recipe calls for (I tried it a second time with the called for amount and didn't like the result). Here's a photo of Cinnamon for a size comparison on the squash:
"I resent the accusation that I have a face shaped like a butternut squash!"
Here are the main ingredients that I used. One medium sweet potato, the Cinnamon sized squash and instead of using 3 large carrots, I used 14 baby carrots. I peeled and cubed the squash and potato and halved the carrots. I put all of that in three cups of chicken broth, added a half teaspoon of ground sage, a pinch of ground ginger and a pinch of mace (if you don't have mace you can use nutmeg in its place).
You boil all of that until it gets tender. Once everything is tender I put it all in a blender (or you could use a food processor) until it's pureed:
This is the end result. It is a very filling fall flavored soup and goes well with a spinach salad (whenever you can get fresh spinach again) with a raspberry vinaigrette.
The recipe said that you can add a teaspoon of hot pepper sauce, which is an excellent addition. I'll be curious to try this with the cranberry bit that the recipe calls for, but I have to say the soup is quite nice on its own and I like to try squash recipes that don't call for copious amounts of sugar and butter (not that I have anything against sugar and butter but squash can be more than just a vehicle for those two ingredients).