BeyondPasta

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving to everybody!

I haven’t dared to cook a turkey yet, but it looks like my squash soup is becoming a Thanksgiving tradition.

This soup is creamy heaven! Even my boyfriend, that does not eat any kind of vegetable, enjoys it. The idea of this recipe comes from a frozen soup that is sold in Italy, you just melt these orange frozen cubes  in a pot and it is ready to be eaten. I was skeptical the first time I bought this product, but I was wrong: I fell in love! In the US of course I cannot find the soup so I tried to make it from scratch. The hardest part was to find the right variety of squash, once I found butternut squash that was it, the soup is fantastic.

It is very easy to prepare this soup, you just have to be very careful peeling and cutting the squash. Here I am going to share my two cents on peeling the butternut squash.

A fundamental tool to make this soup the right creamy texture is a hand or regular blender.

Try this soup while the season of squash is at its best!

Ingredients

• 1 sweet onion
• 1 large butternut squash
• 4 medium potatoes (the weight of the potatoes should be about half the weight of the squash)
• 4 cups water (1 liter)
• 2 vegetable bouillon cubes
• 1/2 cup (125 ml) heavy cream

Preparation

Start by peeling and cutting the squash. This is my technique: lay the squash on the side and starting from the top part cut a thin disk to remove the peel from the top of the squash. Then slice it in disks a little over 1 inch -3 cm- thick (picture 1). When you get to the bottom of the squash, the larger part, turn the quash back up and cut it in half to obtain two almost semi-spherical parts. Remove the seeds with a spoon, turn the two pieces  of squash with the internal side facing down (where the seeds were). Cut a thin slice to remove the peel from the bottom of the squash and then cut the pieces in 1 inch thick slices (picture 3). Now that your squash is all sliced up the peeling comes, picture 2 shows my technique for the peeling. Given the way the squash has been sliced, you can cut straight down to remove the peel, easy and safe for your fingers! Finally cut the squash in chunks of about 1 inch. Picture 4 shows one of the slices chopped down.

Now that the squash is peeled and cut into chunks, peel and roughly chop the onion, peel and chop the potatoes in chunks about the same size of the squash chunks.

Put all the vegetables in a pot. Pour 4 cups of water and add 2 vegetable bouillon cubes. Put on the stove over medium-high heat, bring to a boil and let cook for 15-20 minutes, until the potatoes and the squash are tender.

Using a blender puree the vegetables. Let on the stove until it has reached the desired thickness. I like mine quite thick, you can see it in the close-up picture.

Finally add the heavy cream and stir well.

Serve hot, with some toasted slices of bread if you want to make it a perfect autumn/winter meal. Enjoy!