Smiling Nut

Butternut Squash Soup

Hello everyone, its Ralph here.

Olga has recently had a lot on her mind with family responsibilities so I decided (with some subtle prompting :o) ) to write a blog post for something I made for her recently. she has not had a lot of time for cooking or baking due to the absolutely amazing job she is going supporting her parents, so when I found a gap I went for it.

I got home the other day and got out 3 books. Cooking for Geeks, Cooking for Dummies and an Ina Paarman recipe book. I read one or two pages of the Ina Paarman book but, naturally, every recipe contains one or other Ina Paarman sauces or powder, so I decided to go for one of the other two books for slightly more adventure. I opened Cooking for Dummies somewhere around soups, and thought that soup would be a good idea seeing as Olga is addicted to eating Woolies oven rolls with soup, or cheese, or chili-mayo or anything for that matter. There were none that jumped out at me from that book, so I opened Cooking for Geeks. I was hoping I would find a recipe in this book for that night because Olga gave it to me recently as a present (this is without doubt one of the most thoughtful presents anyone has ever given me). If you are at all interested in the science of cooking you should check it out. It's especially great if you are interested in the science of food AND you are a geek :o)

I quickly settled on "Butternut Squash Soup". Its from the section called "Choosing Your Inputs: Flavours and Ingredients." Olga doesn’t like spicy butternut soup, so she almost never orders it when we are out, and as luck would have it this was a very plain soup. The author does go on to provide a long list of things that can be added, but I kept it as simple as possible.

Butternut Squash Soup

Purée in a food processor or with an immersion blender:

2 cups (660g) butternut squash, peeled, cubed, and roasted (about 1 medium squash)

2 cups (470g) chicken, turkey, or vegetable stock

1 small (130g) yellow onion, diced and sautéed

1/2 teaspoon (1g) salt (adjust to taste)

I would say that this is very easy, but quite time consuming unfortunately if you only use the oven for the butternut. I always find that sautéing onions takes a lot longer than planned as well.

This post was called Smiling Nut because my plan was to draw happy faces on the soup at the end with the cream, but as you can see from the pictures the cream just went all over the place :o)